text by Gregorio Botta

Photography is (the gathering of an intuition) - Gioberto Noro

Beyond the threshold of cell III

They went to one of the most sacred and reserved places in the world of painting, the Convent of San Marco in Florence, which Beato Angelico frescoed only for the sake of his own eyes and those of the monks - not of the public, to which access was forbidden. And they chose the most intense and collected place, cell III, where the most essential and revolutionary Annunciation of the time (and of the years to come) manifests itself: where the Angel and the Virgin share the same space for the first time, as a warm glow illuminates the wall of the loggia that encloses them. 

Sergio Gioberto and Marilena Noro went there to capture that germinal atmosphere, and chose a detail, a frame to be precise (framing: isn’t that what photographers do?) which contains the real protagonist of the fresco: not Gabriele, nor Mary, but the light. And their gaze dwelled on the spot where the wall rests on the floor, where the vertical line joins the horizontal one and a small difference in tone bears witness to the conjunction of the two worlds: a metaphysical horizon line that marks the boundary between heaven and earth. It is the Geometric place of Being (a tribute to Beato Angelico) - this is how they entitled this work that announces and generates all the others: a journey in silence and waiting through seven stages.