The exhibition traces a forty-year span of artistic practice without following a chronological order. The photographs follow one another freely, guided by associations, intuitions, emotions and memories, as if they were the artist’s own unfettered thoughts, often accompanied by his brief notes, akin to fragments taken from his diary. Two major themes emerge in the exhibition: the body and light. The theme of the body is evident in the photographic series dating from his adolescence in Latisana (where Ila – whose real name is Filippo Clericuzio – was born in 1967) and from the nearby beach at Lignano Sabbiadoro, where the compositions play with the volumes of the bathers’ bodies. Light, on the other hand, is the common thread linking the selection of more abstract and ethereal images, which focus on light as the primary substance of vision and our perceptual experiences. Darkness, shadows, reflections and glimmers become akin to apparitions “…capable of filling us with the same sense of wonder that, as children, seized us when we discovered a ray of light dancing amongst the dust, or a micro-rainbow imprinted on an open palm”, writes the curator in her critical essay.

Many of the photographs on display are being shown here for the first time, printed on photographic paper. The images are not conceived according to pre-established dimensions, but can take on different forms and formats, just as there are many different possible simultaneous worlds hypothesised by quantum physics. This is another reason why, as Barbara Casavecchia observes, FOTONI is “one of the many exhibitions that could have emerged from that rich and deeply personal archive, which has remained unpublished until now”.

The selection of works on public display stems, in Bêka’s words, “from a desire to understand, within this flow of images, which ones are capable of reawakening the gaze and bringing new perceptions to the fore”. The most effective analogy for describing this process is suggested by Louise Lemoine: a film edit, capable of giving rise to a narrative from the formless mass of footage. In Bêka & Lemoine’s films, too, the narrative is not based on a structured screenplay, but remains open to emotional experience and serendipitous encounters. It was precisely this special sensibility that led, in 2016, to the acquisition by MoMA in New York of the duo’s entire body of work produced up to that point, which now forms part of the museum’s permanent collection.