Stefano Cerio: Aquila

The ground is covered in snow, the horizon a dark line of mountains; low milky clouds hide the sky. In the foreground, a shapeless form, a strange sagging mass of bright colors—red, blue and yellow—stirs as it fills with air. In less than a minute a popular fairground attraction appears: an inflatable, rotund form, awkward and genial, shaped like a double slide or a springboard, the kind often seen in children’s play areas, at fairs and village gatherings. Along with other inflatables in the same vein—a chubby castle complete with dragon, a football pitch—the slide is part of the bizarre landscape conjured up in Stefano Cerio’s Aquila, a series of photographs taken in Abruzzo at different times of year and in highly impactful settings not far from L’ Aquila, on the plains of Campo Felice, Campo Imperatore and Pescasseroli.