curated by 3/3
MACRO Future
Image: Joel Sternfeld, Grand Nymphaeum of the Villa dei Gordiani Parco dei Gordiani, Rome, August 1990 and A Railroad Artifact, 30th St, May 2000, courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine Gallery, NY
The growth of the suburbs of Rome and its transformations emphasize the need for a critical approach in the perception of the urban dimension of the city.
The exhibition Past Forward Toward Future, curated by 3/3, and sponsored by the Comune di Roma, Assessorato alle Politiche Culturali e della Comunicazione - Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali, in the framework of Rome Architecture Festival – Index Urbis, takes in examination this dimension making a comparison between two projects by Joel Sternfeld, which retrieve suggestions from the past and the inspirations for the future of the city.
Campagna Romana is a survey conducted along the aqueducts and the consular roads to the south and east of the city, and therefore is a unique case study of the Ager Romanus. When, in the early 90s, Sternfeld decided to confront himself with the lines that, from ancient Rome, traced his relationship with the suburban world, he then turned to the contamination of the contemporary, being aware of the rapid development of the new city, and puts us in indirect contact with today’s reality.
In 2000, the founders of Friends of the High Line, an elevated freight railroad that runs from the West Side Yard through the neighbourhood of Chelsea in New York crosses the north-east of New York and which was threatened to be demolished, asked Sternfeld to walk along the High Line and document the dilapidated conditions and the natural flora of the High Line. His photographs were collected in a book, Walking the High Line, which had a great importance in the transformation process of the railroad into a public park and are of particular interest for the city of Rome, where questions about the conversion of the Sopraelevata (an elevated road) have been raised for years.