Travel notes, notes of meetings, notes of reports, notes of lessons, notes of games, notes of shows, notes of cities, notes of friendships, notes of …
Outside his professional life, Dome always felt the need to express what was happening around him, with extreme creative freedom, resorting to drawing and photography as communicative languages that were more suitable and pleasing to him.
Actually, he documented situations, encounters, walks, part of the world in the various countries he lived in and visited, using drawing, sometimes coloured, sometimes painted in watercolour, some other times made with felttip pens.
Some drawings show, shrouded in dim lights, expectations, shows, real or fantastic characters to which he was able to give an entity, a life, a face, for which he often used sheets of headed notepaper with the address of a hotel (i.e. the notepads normally made available to rooms’ guest)…
This could be a sign of an urgent need to document, to tell certain experienced moments, thoughts, emotions, meetings…
I first met Dome at the end of the seventies: he worked for the then DOS (Department of Social Works of Canton of Ticino), located in Via Orico 5, in Bellinzona,while I lived and had my studio in the same street, at number 1, so we were separated by one house only.
One day he came to see me and asked me if I could develop for him some black and white films (35 mm) and make him some proof sheets of contact prints.
At that time, I did not have a shop open to the public, but since our first contact I noticed he looked nice and special, so I accepted – by way of an exception – to
become his referent workshop artisan.
I immediately discovered with great pleasure his passion for photography: the more I developed and printed his proofs, the more I was intrigued by him as a person. In fact, I often wondered about how such a very cultured character of his status could approach photography with so much passion and, on the other hand, be able to tell through images a part of his world using this alternative
and experimental language.
Dome was very attentive to the photographic work of Robert Frank, Duane Michals, Robert Doisneau, Brassan, Helmut Newton, Sebastião Salgado…, the one that allowed us to witness the transition from analogue to digital.
With him I had the pleasure of being able to reflect almost as with a true “colleague” on the years where photographic experimentation embraced various communication fields inherited by photographers like Henri Cartier Bresson (the times of the Magnum agency), when you had to think first and then create the image, unlike what happens today, when you do without knowing exactly what, and then try to think. In short, I am referring to those years when photography still had a smell, an address, a value, which today has unfortunately remained to just a few.
After a few months of dialogue with Dome, I gave him a copy of the keys to access my workshop and use the dark-room; my proposal was immediately welcome by him, who used to spend endless hours, nights in the dark, except for a few small soft lights (yellow-red) that were used in the workshop in order not to affect the sensitive emulsion of photographic paper.
Many times, when I arrived in the workshop in themorning, I happened to find him still locked in: when he opened the door of the dark-room, a special smell came out, due to the mixture of acids used for developing and fixing, acetic acid, combined with the scent of his cigarillos and the smell of alcohol that he used to disinfect his hands, all wrapped in a thick cloud of smoke!!!
I am sure that his was a true passion that enhanced his innate abilities, which allowed him to create abstract and surreal images that could only come out of his hands.
Even today in my dark-room, there are black cards of different shapes that Dome used to shade dark parts or vice versa, to hide parts of the image or to insert another one, in a photographic print.
In the eighties, a real professional collaboration began between us for the informational and preventive campaigns (e.g. the health dish) conducted by the Department, with the graphic support of Fulvio Roth.
There is nothing left for me to do but say one last thing: “Thank you Dome”, for allowing me to participate and share with you a part of your immense creativity.
On this occasion, I feel honoured to have been able to help publicize part of your creative side.
Many thanks go to his family too, for allowing me, as a friend, to “rummage through his photographic and pictorial archives”.
Alfonso Zirpoli – Photographer