We are used to viewing a photograph as an end result. But what if a photo is used as just the starting point of another creative process? Is it still a photograph? This is one of the questions prompted by the beautifully strange artworks of Maurizio Anzeri, who intricately embroiders found photographs with coloured thread. An exhibition of his work, But It’s Not Late It’s Only Dark, is currently on show at Chapter as part of the Diffusion photography festival in Cardiff.
The Italian-born, British-based Anzeri searches out vintage portraits in flea markets and junk shops, viewing them, he says, as landscapes on which to map out his own unique geography of suggestion. Faces are criss-crossed with coloured skeins, or patterned in curves and circles until they are barely visible. Sometimes the end result resembles an elaborate mask; at other times
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/may/09/maurizio-anzeri-embroidered-photographs-cardiff