Realpolitik: a satirical portrait of contemporary Italian politics

3 years ago

Luca Sentese and Marco P. Valli’s photographic project Realpolitik (2018-2023), which was already on display at BASE Milan last June 23, also arrives in Rome for its second stop. The exhibition – in collaboration Cesura – will open Dec. 21 at Contemporary Cluster. The project consists of several caricature portraits of current Italian politicians, with the aim of proposing a different point of view from the images they disseminate on social networks and, in particular, during propaganda. The faces are taken very closely, accentuating the often disturbing facial expressions. Among the selected images, we see the most iconic ones, such as that of Matteo Salvini, Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Renzi. The project emphasises the transversal role of photography, which not only has a documentary purpose but also, and above all, can act as a powerful critical tool.

In the curatorial text by Nicola Patruno, it is clearly explained how these images “interrupt the chain of command of political communication in its own attempt to appear authentic, simple, and straightforward, thus unveiling through the photographs the swarm of artifices on which the system of political representation in Italy builds.“

Realpolitik originated in 2018, from the synergetic work of Luca Sentese and Marco P. Valli, who have been publishing the project in various independent magazines for five years now. From Boys Boys Boys to Popolopopolo, but also in Lega Nord Party, MoVimento Lento, Mask off and Tik Tok Tak, all published by Cesura Publish, the publishing house of the photo collective that is celebrating its 15th anniversary with this very exhibition. The enormous success of the shots sees them appear in major newspapers and magazines, including Time Magazine and La Repubblica, which very often chose them as covers.
We have already talked here about the project dedicated to Matteo Salvini, which the authors translated into a photo book entitled Il Corpo del Capitano (The Captain’s Body), published in 2020.