Ugo Casubolo Ferro appeared to me, from our very first meeting, like a character straight out of a Pasolini movie. But in truth, I had already seen, without knowing him, some of his works hanging on the walls of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. I had no difficulty superimposing the impression the person made on me with that produced by his early works: there was a kind of muted fervor there. We spoke at length about light, about phenomenology—perhaps it was the philosopher I had in front of me at that moment— while everything Valérie Jouve had told me about him came back to mind: his passion for printing, the assistance he had given her during her exhibition. I also learned that he was close to my friend, the photographer and printer Payram. In short, the strangeness emanating from Ugo Casubolo Ferro felt familiar to. […]
You work where my gaze comes to rest. On the photosensitive surface that gathers the grey of a cow and the grey of a tree. On the concrete surfaces that, through your gesture, welcome the engraving of another’s hand. On the surface of a negative also scratched by my desire to make something appear. Because these are sensitive and intimate surfaces, I ask to inhabit your works. […]
Amid black-and-white images, the artist introduces his work with a few words on light, which is “never where one expects it to be.” This light is what allows his photographs to come into being and be shown to us, to exist and to render themselves present to us. They are cows in a field, a face bathed in sunlight, or the knowing gaze of a friend. Light—the raw material of analogue practice, of transfer, and of the printing of images—induces and generates an existence that is also an experience of being in the world. […]