adriano sofri, i trenta assassini

[…] benché annoveri fra i miei migliori amici una quantità di fotografi, ho una predilizione per le cabine automatiche in cui si fanno quattro scatti con mille lire […] Dentro quelle macchinette ci si illude di padroneggiare la propria immagine [..] Mi vengono questi pensieri perchè leggo un appunto di Alessandro Falassi […] che definisce Marco Delogu ‘famoso per ritratti di compositori, di carcerati, di cardinali in pensione’. Ecco una vera idea. Chi di noi, da Tiziano in qua, non sa che faccia abbia, e che veste, un cardinale? Ma un ‘cardinale in pensione’? appena ho letto la formula li ho immaginati, i cardinali in pensione: tali e quali i cardinali in servizio, salva una piccola, quasi impercettibile differenza, un rimpianto, un’offesa, un abbandono sollevato. Devo chiedere a Delogu di mandarmeli, i cardinali a riposo. Mettiamo che avessi letto che Delogu è, fra l’altro, ‘famoso per i ritratti di fantini in pensione’: come li avrei immaginati? Un po’ come i cardinali, magari, come fantini in servizio, ma con una piccola piega di rimpianto, un’impercettibile offesa, un sollievo abbandonato. ‘Macché. Li ho qui davanti, i ritratti dei ‘trentasei assassini’, e non ce n’è uno che ammetta di essere in pensione. Hanno occhi che specchiano l’avversario – il forografo, l’intervistatore, il resto del mondo – e dicono: ‘A noi due!’ […]


[..] although I have a number of photographers among my best friends, I prefer to get my picture taken in one of those little boots where you get four shots for a thousand lire. [..] Inside those little boots you can delude yourself into thinking that you’re in control of your own image, that you’re your own photographer. [..] These thoughts are coming to me because I’m reading a note by Alessadro Falassi [..] that says Marco Delogu is ‘famous for his portraits of composers, prison inmates, cardinals in retirement.’ Well, there’s something new. Who of us, from Titian to the present, doesn’t know what kind of face a cardinal has, or how he dresses? ‘Cardinal in retirement,’ though! As soon as I read those words I could imagine them, those cardinals in retirement: exactly like the cardinals they were when they were on active duty, but with a small, almost imperceptible difference, a regret, a feeling of indignity, of relieved abandonment. I’ll have to ask Delogu to send me his retired cardinals. Let’s suppose I’d read that Delogu is, among other things, ‘famous for his portraits of retired jockeys.’ How might I have imagined them? A bit like the cardinals, perhaps, like jockeys still on active duty, but with a slight wrinkle of regret, an imperceptible feeling of indignity, and abandoned sense of relief. What am I saying! I’ve got the portraits of the ‘thirty-six assassins’ right here in front of me, and there isn’t one of them who admits to being retired.

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