Ronni Campana’s neglected statues are a sight for sore eyes

Date
23 June 2016

Finding beauty in the broken, damaged and vandalised is photographer Ronni Campana with his series Neglected Statues. “I noticed some funky Dali-inspired moustaches drawn with a Sharpie pen on a flawless Venus statue which made me giggle,” says Ronni. “The more I looked around the more I found, so I started cataloguing the most significant ones.”

We’ve featured Ronni’s work before with his collection of badly repaired cars, and again he plays on the stark contrasts he’s captured. The ornate detail within the statues is completely undone by the naive markings of felt-tips and broken-off features and it’s an idea Ronni was keen to explore. “Basically all the greatness that Italy had and has been known for throughout history is somehow being neglected and ridiculed. It’s interesting to see how a statue, that should symbolise beauty and perfection in its purest form starts to look more like a wreck.”

While shot in their original surroundings, Ronni preserves a background hue of grey-blue emulating both the sky and the material of the statues themselves. “I wanted to maintain a certain language to create a catalogue of neglected statues.” The misplacement felt throughout the series is enhanced by the way Ronni has documented these fallen beauties so much so they start to appear as flat images rather than 3D creations.

Ronni’s despair for the stony form is portrayed with humour and careful observation, with this series the Milanese photographer hopes to renew our love of statues: “From my standpoint a statue is the icon of eternal beauty, this form of art has been left aside by our society and in my eyes this symbol has yet to be re-interpreted properly. It’s a real shame, imagine how a giant Venus de Milo as big as a HSBC building could look!”

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Ronni Campana: Neglected Statues

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Ronni Campana: Neglected Statues

Above
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Ronni Campana: Neglected Statues

Above
Left

Ronni Campana: Neglected Statues

Above
Left

Ronni Campana: Neglected Statues

Above
Left

Ronni Campana: Neglected Statues

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About the Author

Rebecca Fulleylove

Rebecca Fulleylove is a freelance writer and editor specialising in art, design and culture. She is also senior writer at Creative Review, having previously worked at Elephant, Google Arts & Culture, and It’s Nice That.

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