Maryon Park

“Maryon Park” is the location Michelangelo Antonioni chose, in 1966, to shoot the scenes that would become cult images in his film ‘Blow Up’, and rightly so.
The park is located in Charlton, south-east London, a place that has remained virtually unchanged since Antonioni filmed there. I first went there to take a series of photos on March 7 and 8, 2007. I returned on March 7, 2014. I called this series “Maryon Park”. I used a medium-format color negative, 6 x 7 inches. I wanted the light of winter to shine through spring.
The series began with my memories of the film, and it was a way of repeating it myself. So I went to the places where Antonioni had filmed his famous scenes, scenes that I also remember, and returned there seven years later. The series I shot was essentially about capturing the sensation and phenomenon of déjà vu. Today, these scenes have become like clichés, so much so have they become inscribed in the memory of time, individually and collectively. Shortly after returning from my first trip to Maryon Park, I read a phrase by Antonioni:

“We know that beneath the image revealed there is another more faithful to reality, and beneath this reality there is yet another reality, and yet another, to the point that all absolute reality remains a mystery that no one can ever see”.

Films can enrich the imagination, and cinema often inspires my work as a photographer, to the point where I could say that I understand reality better thanks to cinema. Some filmmakers create cinematic experiences that seem equal to real life. Antonioni’s films cover this experience perfectly.” – Giasco Bertoli