Contrasti Urbani is a photography studio based in L'Aquila.
It develops projects on places modification processes and on the relationship between man, environment and time, as well as dealing with architecture and landscape photography.
It is managed by Antonio Di Cecco, who is represented by Contrasto Agency.
Antonio Di Cecco was born in 1978 in L'Aquila, where he currently lives and works.
Since 2018, he has been involved in the SEISMIC APENNINES CULTURAL LANDSCAPE project at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence - Max Planck Institut, continuing the research started within the research group L'AQUILA AS A POST-CATASTROPHIC CITY, about the post-disaster landscape representation with particular attention to temporary living forms. > KHI
For the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, he created the online exhibition so called “PHOTOGRAPHY AND CATASTROPHES. ANTONIO DI CECCO IN DIALOGUE WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FILES COLLECTIONS”, which was curated by Carmen Belmonte, Elisabetta Scirocco and Gerhard Wolf. In December 2018, the images became part of the photographic files archive. > KHI
His LANDSCAPE SHAPES project, produced with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute of Hamburg and the National Tourism Agency, was exhibited in 2018 at the Italian Cultural Institutes of Hamburg, Munich and Lyon. > IIC
During April 2016 he participated in the UP! MARGHERA ON STAGE for the Venice Pavilion, XV Architecture Biennale.
During May 2015, the images of the project called “FULL EMPTY. A LOOK AT THE TERRITORY OF L’AQUILA” became part of the archive of the Central Institute for Catalogue and Documentation. > ICCD
During April 2013, he published the volume IN FULL EMPTY. A LOOK AT THE TERRITORY OF L’AQUILA [Peliti Associati], edited by Benedetta Cestelli Guidi, with texts by Laura Moro, the director of the Central Institute for Catalogue and Documentation.
News
For the cover of number I358 issue of Internazionale, 24 hours in Italy, on May 8th, forty journalists, writers and photographers met dozens of people, from Friuli-Venezia Giulia to Sicily regions, in order to narrate about fears, difficulties and hopes in the first week of the phase two, after the end of the isolation.
Antonio Di Cecco photographed L'Aquila from 18 to midnight > Una serata all’Aquila [Italian]
Projects
Nature and traces of the ex Soviet Union.
What can the person who decides to cross the historic center of L'Aquila find?
Somewhere on the Apennines there is a white space where you can get lost.
Antonio Di Cecco in a dialogue with the collections of the Photografic Files of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence
Once I get at the top of the steep staircase carved into the rock, my gaze instinctively seeks the sea but the flat horizon is still far from reaching.
A discipline. An oscillating form of attention, in which the observer and the observed object often come to exchange their roles. In that moment the environment investigates the observer moods.
[Alberto Bazzucchi]
Where even cosmic rays cannot arrive, shielded by a thousand and four hundreds meters of rock.
[Maria Francesca Palmerio]
Over the centuries there has always been a strong desire to look at the surrounding world from greater heights.
[Maria Francesca Palmerio]
Where the air is lighter.
And this is why, as Perec notes, "living is passing from one space to another, trying, as much as possible, not to get hurt that much”
[Marco Morante]