India, Benares. Ghat delle cremazioni, 1997

“The sun, I always repeat, interests me because it creates shades; it is so dramatic that it dialectically produces its opposite.” (Scianna, F., Il sole mi interessa perché fa ombra, in Ferdinando Scianna. Fotografie 1963-2006. Lucca: Fondazione Raggianti, 2006). One of the photos by Ferdinando Scianna acquired for the CRT Collection is Sant’Elia, 1980, shot in the shade of an open interior, looking through the shutters, against the luminosity of the sea. Unlike the water, lit up by the reflection and sprinkled with touches of white light, the sky is permeated, substantiated by the sun. Focusing on it the light becomes black in our blinded glance, in the same way that the Sant’Elia sky is so luminously dazzling that it becomes leaden. [...]