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> Storia della fotografia pornografica
History of Pornographic Photography
Extract from the author's introduction:
Not an abstract but instead... INSTRUCTIONS ON USE.
If the thing seems not to be exaggerated I would ask the reader, how they say, kneeling,
to read, before the other texts, these instructions for use. Because this is a book that
is born and works in an irregular or unusual, for which, without learn the reasons,
it is likely to collect a more critical than it deserves.
Not only the contents, but also the history of this work is infamous, in triple sense
that Borges has given to the word in its A Universal History of Infamy. The idea
of the work was formed a long time ago, when the author was more or less
sixteen years old (Italy 1937), to the latrine of a technical institute commercial, where as a
student unchecked and ruined by too much too good or bad readings, a day wrote in
pencil on the wall "Viva Lenin!" with a hammer and sickle and "Long live the cunt!"
with the ancient sign that is a grain of wheat enlarged with thin legs that
seem rays, or vice versa.(...)
The long and short of it is that to make the Institute upside down
(was a guy from Rome to make a speech!) was not the "Viva Lenin" but "the cunt" with the image!
The Lenin was deleted, of course, but not very good, however, I had the impression that
no one knew who he was really; but for the "cunt" they strip the plaster off.(...)
Perhaps, at that time, not to have other distractions, the sixteen-year-old boys
reflected on the facts - even more banal - amplified. So I decided to study the reasons
why the graffito of a big grain of wheat with thin legs, was more noise than the
hammer and sickle. And this even in those years, during the fascist!
I found into the "Berio" , the great library of Genoa then incinerated by the war,
a booklet French bound and illustrated with etchings of that, damn, now I do not remember
the title but only the subtitle that said that the walls are paper - the newspapers - of the mad:
Les murs sont le papier des fous.
So I learned that the Graffiti are the first graphics voices of the man, that the image of
cunt is more than 30.000 years old, that is the most important Sign of epigraphy, because
it reflects the immediacy of daily life, the taste and the popular feeling more profound.
The graffiti are, learned, studied not only from archaeologist but also by the epigraphist,
the linguist, by historian and I call them all to witness.
(...)
This infamous history is just the simple fantasy of a boy
(a little complicated to the senile tip) concerning the big-grain-of-wheat-with-thin-legs.
Because all the pornographic pictures, all all simple or intrigate,
mobile or fixed, analog or digital, are nothing more than the vicinity - more or
less necessary - not of the real cunt (who knows if exists) but of its symbol, and especially
the photographic one, which is truly the best of all.
Ando Gilardi
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