Kiev – Ukraine. A Country and an entire culture held between tradition and innovation; between the persistence of a remote but strongly shared past and prospects of a future dedicated to the acceleration and to the desire of homogenization. Ignacio Maria Coccia’s work is recorded in a well known form of documentary photography: the portrait of a Country. His view, common denominator of so many photo-reportages in the last fifteen years, dwells upon a transitional moment that testifies a dying out world, which survives in a general climate of renovation. What fascinates me in this kind of jobs, also by a historiographical point of view is the limitedness sense of the truth that they emanate; they represent historical moments quickly destined, without appeal, to leave place to something else. I often have the strange impression to see evanescent figures, against the light, running away as chased. These photos are similar to the post-war period photos. This transitoriness is often seized by the photographers better than any expert of social sciences. It’s the irreplaceable talent of the photography. So, it is offered to us the representation of situations that seem trapped in a dimension of eternal fixity but in the knowledge that their definitive capitulation will soon happen. The old and the new live together in the world like great-grandfather and grandson. The distance between the old traditions and the collective pressure to the change is very evident and visible.
by Paola Riccardi
