Debora Panaccione
- Michael Hanna
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Debora Panaccione is an analogue photographer and photographic assemblage artist who has exhibited in Italy, Spain, and Mexico. She curated an international exhibition in Aguascalientes, Mexico as well as participated in a residency in Spain at the Monastery of Yuso and Suso in San Millan de la Cogolla. Debora has exhibited at San Sebastiano di Corbellino and Palazzo Galli in L’Aquila, Italy. She describes her work as “the relationship between personal and collective memory, employing photographic collage and material assemblage to narrate familial and communal stories, in a continuous interplay between past and present”.
Most of Debora’s artworks are analogue photographs of projection slides taken in 1988-1989 by her father, shortly before she was born in 1992. She projects the slides onto a white wall and photographs them and sometimes includes herself in front of the projections or installs objects such as stones, bricks, and pieces of wood on the wall which come from the local community of her hometown Fontecchio in the province of L’Aquila, Italy. The slides depict various family members and scenes from local places as well as her father’s business trips. Debora also shoots straight analogue and digital photography of scenery from her province of L’Aquila which reveal aged and dilapidated infrastructure.
These reshot vintage photographs are worn from age and then eroded even further through the capturing of analogue format photography. There remains a great sense of erosion and lingering sense of decay in the representation of imagery, as if to reflect fleeting moments, the passage of time, and withering connections to the distant past. These historical slides from almost four decades ago not only reveal Debora’s personal family past but also a documentation of her local and far off regions. In both her photographic assemblages and analogue photography, Debora captures textures and surfaces of what she refers to as “the little things”, the small matter which make up the abundance of life. The photographs are often scratched and contain double exposure of debris enhancing the notions of decay, erosion, and reflective memory.
The Little Things # 9 (pictured above) reveals what seems to be an overgrown and neglected garden and property. The bulbs from the flowers still grow but in a sense of chaos of directions and excess foliage, as if not properly manicured. The boarded up stone shed appears to be very old and aging like a relic out in the field appearing more like a fossil than a structure. These personal photographs of the local region are deeply connected to Debora’s series of family slides because they reveal identity through the passage of time.
Debora Panaccione can be described as a multi-faceted artist who uses unconventional methods to reveal identity about herself, her family, ancestors, and region. Her works serve as important historical documents in addition to fine art. The emphasis on analogue photography reveals an almost fluxus-like approach to the past through the process in aging technologies. Although aged, format photography creates rich textures and deep contrast. Likewise, her black and white digital photographs have a character in vivid detail of erosional qualities of her subject, invoking a heightened sense of realism, both in the literal and sociological sense. A deeply attuned artist, Debora Panaccione connects us to her personal history, her ancestors, and has us contemplate the purpose of everyday experiences on our psyche and senses.
