Primaire | Ardotypes From The Forest is an exhibition by Alessandro Parente, who, with this presentation, has been welcomed into the ranks of the artists already represented by the gallery. The exposition will be on display from 10 October to 28 November 2026 at Lab 1930, a contemporary photography exhibition space located at 21 Via Mantova in Milan.
As a photojournalist and artist, Alessandro Parente uses photography to give a voice to marginalised people, forgotten landscapes and unconventional photographic processes. His aim is to reveal the essence of his subjects through refined, historically inspired photographic printing techniques carried out by hand.
His connection with the places he has experienced is evident in the series of 11 unique works on display for the first time at the gallery. These were created over several years using a technique Parente developed in 2022, during an artist residency in the Ardennes region, situated between Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Germany. As a specialist in analogue photography, Parente has further developed the wet collodion process to experiment with slate, the material that gives the Ardennes their name. The artist thus returns to the dawn of photography, specifically to 1851, by applying the wet collodion technique to materials other than glass or metal: the result is a new technique, renamed “Ardotype”.
The stone, quarried from the local mine at Alle-sur-Semois and containing fossil and mineral inclusions, provides the backdrop to images which depict a deeply humanised forest struggling to return to its original state and status as a primary forest. It is no coincidence that Parente’s research stems from the ideas developed by the French botanist and biologist Francis Hallé, founder of the association bearing his name, which was established with the aim of regenerating a primary forest in Western Europe – that is, a forest composed of native tree species and devoid of any visible traces of human activity. The Ardennes region was identified as one of the areas to be left to evolve freely over the coming centuries, allowing nature to reclaim its space and restore its original biodiversity.
While we await the realisation of this project, the images from the Primaire series persist, articulating a natural world that, amidst the expanses of monocultures and the indications of human intervention, perpetually endeavours to re-establish the heterogeneity that is its quintessence.
