Stefano Questorio, The Instant Revealed

Of all the artistic forms, photography comes closest to a sacred art, in that it mobilizes an imaginary of light and revelation. Polaroid in particular, with its distinctive materiality, imbues the most ordinary, everyday scenes with an aura of sacrality. Paradoxically called ‘instant photography’, it allows us to see the mystery of the revelation taking place right under our eyes, in the palm of our hand. Seeing the image slowly appearing from the white abyss of form, each Polaroid is a miracle in itself.
By his exclusive use of Polaroid, Stefano Questorio aims to celebrate what Pasolini called “the heartbreaking, marvelous beauty of creation”. His training as a dancer and choreographer naturally led him to focus on the body and its expressive possibilities, using the self portrait as an intimate ‘diary of the soul’. Using poses and postures borrowed from classical art, he transforms the most mundane situations into exemplary narratives, in line with what the same Pasolini said, that “everything is holy”. In a series called “Transition”, he photographed his body 6 times, each frame more overexposed than the other, in a position that recalls Andrea Mantegna’s “Dead Christ”. In another, an angel is comforting a reading girl, in a modern day “Annunciation”. Another series, titled “The Adventures of Mr. Q”, stages, in a humorous yet melancholic manner, the (mis)adventures of an angel, lost in the terrestrial world.
The unpredictable chemistry of the polaroid, reinforced by the use of expired films, prevents the artist to take full control of the medium, allowing him to accept errors and accidents as part of the process. Challenging the idea of authorship, he jokingly calls his snapshots as “polaroids taken by the gods”. Functioning by the laws of serendipity, polaroids illuminate the moment with a celestial light. In that sense they are truly ‘the instant revealed’, small cracks in the veil of reality, allowing us to get a glimpse of the truth that lies behind.
Bio
Stefano Qestorio (b. 1968) is an italian photographer living and working in Bologna. After graduating at the Department of Art, Music and Performing Arts of the University of Bologna, he trained artistically as a dancer and choreographer and worked with several italian and international companies and artists including Romeo Castellucci, Peter Greenaway, Wim Vandekeybus, Carolyn Carlson, Studio Azzurro, and many others. In parallel, he developed his activity as a photographer. Since a teenager, he’s been passionate about analogue photography and darkroom work, recently focusing on instant photography, specifically polaroid. His work has been exhibited in several exhibitions, including Instant Art Arles (Rencontres photographiques section OFF), Instant Art Paris (Paris Photo off section), and published in numerous magazines including Analog Forever, Mauermag, Squaremag and others. Some of his works are exhibited at the permanent Polaroid museum curated by Stephanie Schneider (Bombay Beach, LA, USA) and a selection of his Polaroids was published in the seminal volume "Polaroid Now. The History and future of Polaroid Photography" edited by Steve Christ for Chronicle books (2021). More details at www.stefanoquestorio.com.