In occasione del 40° anniversario del gemellaggio tra Firenze e Kyoto viene qui riproposta, per la sua specificità tematica, parte della grande mostra antologica dell’opera fotografica di Fosco Maraini, Il Miramondo, promossa dal Gabinetto Vieusseux nel 1999 a Firenze.
Firenze e Kyoto sono tanto simili, eppure sottilmente differenti! Queste foto ne presentano alcuni aspetti emblematici.
Importantissima e significativa differenza tra le due città: il regime climatico. Firenze è situata nella regione mediterranea, ha lunghe estati secche, con scarsità d’acqua e vegetazione sobria. Kyoto sorge in territorio monsonico, con abbondanti piogge estive, perciò la vegetazione è rigogliosissima. I dintorni di Kyoto sono rivestiti da selve fiabesche. Fino a tempi recenti, l’abbondanza di legname ha offerto la materia prima per l’architettura civile e religiosa. Kyoto è (ma oggi le cose cambiano) una città di legno. Firenze è invece una città della pietra, del marmo, del mattone.

Florence and Kyoto were twinned because the two cities were considered the most well preserved and most characteristic centres of culture in their respective countries. Each was once a state capital (Florence until 1871 and Kyoto until 1868), each is today the main town of its region and a reference point for the cultural life of its country. The photographs of Fosco Maraini provide an appropriate setting for a comparison of the original and unique features of these two cities in an intelligent exhibition organized by one of the Florentine cultural centers par excellence, the Gabinetto Vieusseux. Maraini understood how to capture the historic basilicas and churches of the center of Florence, the palazzi of its great families, its gardens and those unmistakable signs of the historic architectural layers of the city. He understood also how to render the inimitable parks, temples and monasteries of a Kyoto that knows how to create a balance between modern life and its ancient roots. Time that allows the viewer to savour the similarities and differences between these two cities, distinguished from the outset as a city of “marble and stone”, and a city of “wood”; one centred on the human, the other on nature; one constructed linearly, the other asymmetric and free. Maraini’s eye – his own eye and his camera lens – sees them with his particular ma: the moment that inspired him to catch two very distant generations united by prayer, to wander freely through the water and leaves of Saihoji, to follow the geometric paths made to human design in the garden of the villa Gamberaia or to run along the tracks of the plough and the lines of the paddy fields. These are images of two worlds of still beauty, oases of peace captured in an instant and true to their essential lines. As to lines, perhaps the most emblematic photographs are the grilles and gratings set side by side: each braced to keep away the outside world, and each failing to do so.

Presentazioni di / Presentazion by Adriana Boscaro e Maurizio Bossi
Con un saluto di Eugenio Giani, assessore alle Relazioni internazionali e ai Gemellaggi del Comune di Firenze

Testi in italiano, inglese, giapponese / Italian, Japanese and English texts

Firenze e Kyoto, città parallele Fosco Maraini

Florence and Kyoto were twinned because the two cities were considered the most well preserved and most characteristic centres of culture in their respective countries. Each was once a state capital (Florence until 1871 and Kyoto until 1868), each is today the main town of its region and a reference point for the cultural life of its country. The photographs of Fosco Maraini provide an appropriate setting for a comparison of the original and unique features of these two cities in an intelligent exhibition organized by one of the Florentine cultural centers par excellence, the Gabinetto Vieusseux. Maraini understood how to capture the historic basilicas and churches of the center of Florence, the palazzi of its great families, its gardens and those unmistakable signs of the historic architectural layers of the city. He understood also how to render the inimitable parks, temples and monasteries of a Kyoto that knows how to create a balance between modern life and its ancient roots. Time that allows the viewer to savour the similarities and differences between these two cities, distinguished from the outset as a city of “marble and stone”, and a city of “wood”; one centred on the human, the other on nature; one constructed linearly, the other asymmetric and free. Maraini’s eye – his own eye and his camera lens – sees them with his particular ma: the moment that inspired him to catch two very distant generations united by prayer, to wander freely through the water and leaves of Saihoji, to follow the geometric paths made to human design in the garden of the villa Gamberaia or to run along the tracks of the plough and the lines of the paddy fields. These are images of two worlds of still beauty, oases of peace captured in an instant and true to their essential lines. As to lines, perhaps the most emblematic photographs are the grilles and gratings set side by side: each braced to keep away the outside world, and each failing to do so.