Le hasard fait bien les choses brings into dialogue the shots of two young photographers, Ludovica De Santis and Andrea Basileo, questioning the contemporary practice of the snapshot and the possibilities of representing everyday life. “Le hasard fait bien les choses,” meaning “chance makes things succeed,” is a familiar French saying that alludes to fortunate coincidences, serendipity, a beneficent fate to which life sometimes confronts us causing us to exclaim in amazement. But chance is an element that, those involved in photography, must learn to catch on the fly, to unleash, to make malleable, in order to immortalize their subjects at any given moment in the form of a snapshot. The notion of accidentality thus becomes for some artists the very instrument of their craft, on the same level as the camera: the sine qua non condition of their practice. The exhibition–Le hasard fait bien les choses–features two new series commissioned by La Rada to De Santis and Basileo: skilled portraitists, the two photographers both bring a particularly emotional and intimate look to the subjects immortalized by their analog cameras. Practicing the art of raw, brutal and direct street photography, Ludovica De Santis tells stories of provincial boredom and loneliness. In this new series, the Roman photographer brings her gaze to the region around Viterbo (Italy) to explore suburbia and the lives of its inhabitants in the era of ultra-digitization, accelerated pace of life, and the generation gap made even more pronounced by the advent of the Internet. But really, what has changed? How do habits and images associated with the last century survive?
After the project “Tutti frutti” dedicated to the playful moments of childhood, Andrea Basileo captures in this new series the emblematic gaze of a generation that has decided, for one reason or another, to move away from their place of origin. In the intimacy of their apartments or in affectionate exteriors, the subjects of the Ticinese photographer’s shots evoke a new everyday life in the making, constantly balancing between the traces of the past and a new interior and exterior geography, yet to be constructed. The two series thus become two sides of the same coin, capable of visually grasping the surprises of chance through the crystallization of a moment, poised between epochs and places.
Andrea Basileo was born in Mendrisio, in the Italian part of Switzerland. He studied art history and photography at the Istituto Europeo of Design in Milan. His images has been published on online and paper magazines and has been part of collective and solo exhibitions. His work is part of the collection of the Museo d’Arte of Mendrisio. The project TUTTI FRUTTI will soon be published by XYZ books. He lives and works between Switzerland and Paris.
Ludovica De Santis (also known under the name Kamisalak) is a photographer (and video editor) born in Rome on May 13, 1991. She lived her childhood in a small town in the Lazio province until she moved to the capital for her high school studies. At the age of 19, she moved to Paris to study History of Art and Cinema. She developed an interest in the image from an early age: her photographic exploration has a strong narrative and aesthetic component with a cinematic and scenic imprint. She currently lives and works in Milan.
