It takes many steps and staircases to get to the studio of Silvio Zangarini, tucked away into the attic of het Paleis. With roots in architecture and philosophy, Zangarini’s photographic works play with our understanding of reality and purposefully leaves you feeling slightly disoriented. We spoke to him in his studio about his work and his current projects.
“I was born in Turin in 1981. Together with my wife, I moved through Europe before settling in Groningen. Ever since arriving here, I have actively connected to the cultural environment and find my place within it. My journey into the arts was not linear. I have an architectural background, but interestingly enough I choose to study philosophy at the University or Torino. While technical matters interest me because I like to know how things work, I am actually more interested in the question as to why things are the way they are. The concepts I came across during my studies are still important to me, but I always thought that the language of philosophy can put up a threshold for some and push people away, rather than draw them in. So in order to convey the things I wanted to communicate with the world, I turned to photography rather than philosophy.
I had an epiphany while I was working on one of my visual reconstructions/compositions of the staircases project: I saw more than I could capture in a single frame.
My father had a darkroom at home, so I have always been in contact with the medium. When I finished my philosophy studies in 2008-2009, I began using photography conceptually, stretching its boundaries and questioning its limitations. My thesis was about the disappearance of the author in photography, such as discussed in the work of the conceptual photographer and theorist Franco Vaccari, which deposits that the author of a photograph does not have control on the result of its action because he has to deal with the technological unconscious of the camera, which generates meanings that go beyond the intentions of the photographer. This made me conscious of the technological constraints of the camera. What can it truly extract without the artist? The frame imposed by the camera felt like a limitation. I started mounting images together, reframing them to create a new sense of space. At some point, I realized I cared more about these assembled images than traditional photographs. I had an epiphany while I was working on one of my visual reconstructions/compositions of the staircases project: I saw more than I could capture in a single frame. This realization led me to explore staircases as a subject, transforming them into something beyond their physical presence.
For the past fifteen years, I wanted to capture as many diverse staircases as possible, but it quickly became more difficult to find staircases with unusual structure, which led me to travel to far away places, where unique styles and structures were found. What fascinates me is how I enter into a dialogue with a space. It takes time to truly understand its feeling. Some staircases, like triple staircases where one flows into another, are mesmerizing and labyrinthine. The unexpected perspectives they offer keep surprising me and with these radical spaces, new visual possibilities emerge. Every observation point I choose results in one singular spherical image which is a composition of up to 100 individual shots, allowing me to reconstruct the space in a way that goes beyond what the eye alone perceives. Moving the camera by just a centimeter can completely alter the outcome. These nuances, the smallest shifts, are what keep the work alive for me.
I used to go to great lengths to find staircases, searching through books, libraries, and architectural archives, and reaching out to heritage offices and experts. It was an extremely slow process but rewarding in its own way. Now, I use online archives and databases, scanning for structures that intrigue me before making direct contact. I am intrigued by places that have been photographed often, because the way we imagine those places, seen so many times in the photos, offer a specific very solid image that we think we know very well. Instead, they are still very unknown, and hide so much mystery. With my work, I try to unravel that mystery, to disclose the unseen, to show a different way to look at a place we think we know. The transfiguration operated by my process allow us to see what is hidden. Everyone actually has a different perception of the same reality, which builds a different mental image of it. My work is about acknowledging this diversity and allowing people to see the multiplicity that inhabits our world.
My work functions more like a device than a traditional artwork
My new project stems from the same interest in the multiplicity of reality but it extends the concept from space to people; The project is divided into two parts; Eutopia portraits and Eutopia Cityscapes. I am now working with portraits to introduce a more interactive element. Unlike my staircase images, which are static, these portraits can be seen in multiple ways. Interpretation is never fixed; it constantly changes. My work functions more like a device than a traditional artwork—something that is activated by the viewer. Instead of transmitting a singular meaning, I create mechanisms that allow for new meanings to emerge. The viewer is as much a part of the process as the artist. We bring ourselves into our reality, shaping what we see, meaning that no two people experience the same space in the same way.
I am currently working on a book featuring my staircase project, which is titled Staircases to Elsewhere. It will be published by Hartmann Books, and there will be a crowdfunding campaign along with it. The book is designed to take the project a step further. I collaborated with designer Sybren Kuiper, whose unconventional approach to books allows for more complexity. The book unfolds in a labyrinthine manner, mirroring the dizziness present in my work. It is not merely a summary of my past fifteen years; it is something independent, a device in itself. The structure forces the reader into an active role, engaging with the pages in a way that echoes the experience of navigating a staircase. Rather than documenting my work, it continues the process, offering new ways to navigate space and perception. The book is a space in itself, one that asks to be explored.”