scopionewspaper, “San Cataldo Cemitery” by Mark Durden and João Leal
# July 2022

SCOPIO EDITIONS
Porto, 2022
Mark Durden and João Leal
ISBN 978-989-53640-3-9
40 pages

AAI Research publication
SCOPIO EDITIONS
Porto, 2020

Publisher
Cityscopio Associação Cultural
info@cityscopio.com

Editorial and Advisory Board
Architecture, Art and Image (AAI) research group
Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto

Director
Pedro Leão Neto (FAUP)

Editors
Maria Neto (FAUP/CEAU)

Authors - Texts
Diane Y. F. Ghirardo
Pedro Leão Neto (FAUP)

Authors -Photography
Mark Durden, João Leal

Creative Director
Ne Santelmo

Layout and print
Né Santelmo & Artur Leão

Printing
Gráfica Maiadouro

IIn this issue of scopionewspaper journal “Aldo Rossi: San Cataldo Cemetry”, we present Mark Durden and João Leal’s response to the architecture of Aldo Rossi, capturing through their photography series the essentiality of San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena, rendering its significance through a compelling visual narrative.

Durden and Leal’s photography series starts with a frame within a frame, a powerful image taken through a square opening of the ossuary cube, which directs our gaze to the interior perimeter of the buildings that surround the cube. In emphasizing the contrast between the inner space of the opening and the view of a solitary tree, the photograph evokes the melancholic atmosphere of the cemetery.  The photographers “see through their eyes, not with them”, which can be understood as an assertion that seeing is not limited to mere visual perception but encompasses active interpretation. This perspective, transmitting the poetics of these spaces, evoking derelict structures as well as the ideas of abandonment and neglect that Rossi projected for this incomplete city of the soul, are quite near to that which we can call an “architectural gaze”. 
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scopionewspaper is an Architecture, Art and Image research publication with a special interest in photography as an instrument of inquiry and expression. scopionewspaper disseminates authors who use photography as an instrument to communicate in a critical, exploratory and innovative way diverse themes based upon a comprehensive understanding of architecture as a practice and discipline that integrates the dimensions of art, sociology, history, politics and construction. scopionewspaper has as its technological support for dissemination and communication, the scopio News Editorial area at scopio network platform.