Elisabetta Benassi | All I Remember

Elisabetta Benassi

All I Remember 

Rome, Italy: NERO, 2011 

478 pp., 16.5 x 21.5 cm, hardcover

Edition of 1000

Sometimes having the central information of an image denied to the viewer allows us to better understand it, or contemplate it anew. 

All I remember is a collection of four hundred and seventy-seven photographs that Elisabetta Benassi found in the archives of daily newspapers around Italy and the United States, between the years 2008 and 2011. She collected what she considers to be the most significant photos of the 20th century.

Each page of All I remember corresponds to a single photograph, from a collection of approximately 70,000 images dating from the 1920s to the early 1990s. The dates are not arbitrary. They correspond with the introduction of the 35mm Leica camera in 1925, and the first flash bulbs shortly afterwards, which led to the "Golden Age of Photojournalism”. By the 1990’s, digital photography made such archives unnecessary. 

The origins of the work date back to a time the artist visited the “Pommidoro” in Rome, where a an uncashed cheque from November 1, 1975 is framed on the restaurant wall. It is signed by one of Italy’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

The next day he was brutally murdered at a beach in Ostia. Pasolini's body was almost unrecognizable, after being savagely beaten and run over several times with his own car. Multiple bones were broken and a metal bar had been used to crush his testicles. After his death, his body had been burned with gasoline. 

Benassi made work about Pasolini over a decade prior to this project, from videos where she interacts with a look-alike, to a replica of the car that ran him over. 

A photo of the car is included in All I Remember, taken on November 2, 1975 by the Associated Press. 

But Benassi’s book only features the backs of these photographs, so we do not see the violent image, merely read it’s typewritten caption on the verso: 

[Rome, 2 Nov. (AP) The car owned by Pier Paolo Pasolini, in which Giuseppe Pelosi was stopped. A non-commissioned officer examines Pasolini’s jacket, which was found inside the car.]

The filmmaker’s name and the name of the man who spent nine years in prison for his murder (and recanted his confession almost thirty years later) are circled in felt-tip pen. 

Other photographs documented upside down feature similar handwritten and typed notes, name, dates, rubber stamps, stickers, newspaper clippings and sometimes other photographs. The detritus of now obsolete filing systems. 

Benassi uses the archive for a different kind of archeology, and together these images form an alternative portrait of the 20th century, where images of historical importance are coupled with those from news stories that came and went.  

"It's a collection of events and non-events in history, rather than the images we are addicted to, evoked by the signs that the reverse of those images traced over time, their use and reuse,” Benassi told Fabio Pariante of Frontrunner magazine. "Reversing history, forcing the links to show its hidden plot, looking at things a second time and reversing this gaze of mine also to the beholder: this interests me.”

These ‘images without images’ recall Christian Marclay’s White Noise (1983, see below) and Leah Singer’s silhouette imagery from discarded rubyliths she collected while archiving the photographic collection at the New York Daily News (below, centre). 

Photographs of Hitler admiring a prototype of the Volkswagen Beetle (a car that was partly his idea) and Ku Klux Klan demonstrations bring to mind a troubling exhibition curated by Kim Simon for TPW many years ago, in which lynching photographs had literally been whitewashed. With the hanging victims reduced to a white outline and the horror diminished, the images invite us to look closer at the gathered crowd - hateful expressions, smiling children and picnicking families in their Sunday best. 

The best, and ultimately most honest, histories tend to trouble the timeline, allowing fact and fiction to intermingle. Errors are uncorrected and alternate histories emerge. Books and films are discussed that were never released, or released under different titles. 

Benassi’s work takes its title from an unpublished Gertrude Stein novel. The back of the photograph of the author may be the only time it is referred to. Web searches for “Gertrude Stein” + “All I remember” returned zero results. 

The picture [which I assume is the one I found below, bottom] is captioned as follows:

“Gertrude Stein left), noted writer, sits with Justin Rey, Mayor of the village where her chateau is situated. Miss Stein remained at her chateau during the four years of German occupation of France. She has just completed a new book, dealing with the human race, entitled “All I Remember”. 

All I remember is available from the publisher, here, for the discounted price of €42.50 (from€50.00).