Inside the Italian Academy, warm lights and spacious rooms enveloped me as I weaved through a room of people laughing and speaking in mixtures of Italian and English. Everyone swirled around the simply framed photographs that lined the walls. Daniela Zedda, a photographer from Sardinia, has brought her exhibition “Mastros” to Columbia’s Italian Academy, and with it, Sardinian craftspeople’s exclusive “knowledge of hands” that gives the island its famous smoked cheese and traditional bread.
“In our busy lives, we forget that the things we use everyday are made from basic materials and how important the process of making is,” said anthropologist Gabriella Da Re of the University of Cagliari, at the opening reception of “Mastros” on Thursday. In her photographs, Zedda captures men and women at work, their creased hands embroidering, carving wood, and shearing sheep. No machines are used in the process of production, and every carnival mask or piece of embroidered cloth that results is left with its own individual signature of the hands that created it.
“I particularly like the photo of the man shearing sheep,” said Ariane Ortiz, a Columbia graduate student. “The photographer presents a re-evaluation of primitive work.” In the photo, a man has a sheep on its back as he skillfully sheers its fleece in one well-practiced move. His hands take on an expression of their own, strong and confident in their work.
Indeed, the hands in Zedda’s photographs tell their own stories. In Cheese Maturation and Smoked Cheese, a man in a navy sweater and dull green boots carries round wheels of cheese into a dim room, his hands fitting familiarly around each wheel. Zedda also pays careful attention to the atmosphere associated with each craft, fully utilizing light and shadow to foster the appropriate aesthetic. In Smoked Cheese, light from a window filters through a soft layer of smoke as the smoldering logs in the center of the room seem to imbue the cheese with a particular scent.
“Daniela’s photos present an ongoing dialogue going on between the young and the old, an attempt to find a balance between tradition and the new,” said Da Re, pointing to a pair of photographs featuring a young, rosy woman using machinery in industrial bread making and an older woman clad in an embroidered apron, kneading the dough with her knuckles. Both women are making Sardinian traditional bread, but the older woman’s hands are engraved with history and many years of practice. Unlike the younger woman, she is not smiling, but instead wears a look of concentration in the midst of her work.
The conversation between the young and the old continues in a series of photographs of the carnival parade before Lent. Surprisingly, this traditional Sardinian parade is embraced by the young: teenagers captured dressed all in black, their faces smeared with black paint, carrying wooden masks in their hands. Some even have horns attached to their heads as they cheer joyfully in the streets.
“I hope people are able to find a deep emotion within my photos,” said Zedda. “My photos tell the tale of craftspeople instead of the product.” In fact, the title of the exhibition, “Mastros,” refers to these men and women who harbor tradition in their skilled hands—Zedda shows that they, too, are masters in their own right.
