SANTA MARGHERITA WINES
These images were exhibited first at the Fondazione delle Stelline and then at the Palazzo dell’Arengario and later were selected by Denis Curti for publication in the 1993 volume “Young Italian Photographers.”
In 1990 the company Santa Margherita Wines approached Renato Marcialis to choose 12 photographers specializing in different fields to photograph Pinot Grigio wine. At the presentation of the project Antonio discovered that the Pinot Grigio white wine was produced from black grapes and immediately understood which photographic storytelling project to present. He decided to create 6 brush-printed images , which represented the history of Pinot Grigio.
The first shot represents the strength with which each bunch of grapes hangs on the black vine almost as if it were welded to it. A force that is dampened in the second shot, during the cutting phase in which the white hands collect the bunch despite the resistance of the black hands. The third photo tells the transformation – the moment of bottling – in which the wild strength of the vine and therefore of nature acquires a new shape: the delicate shape of a white and elegant body that finds its complete realization in the fourth shot, finally becoming a bottle . In the fifth photo the wine has now been produced and the two bodies become aware of their detachment and abandon themselves to a long farewell embrace. In the sixth shot, the woman’s body evokes the memory of the man’s body in the first image.