Patti Smith. Simply a Concert

For Fabio Torre Patti Smith is a sort of fetish. The 80 plus black and white portraits of the “poetess of rock” in this book, taken over the last three years on the occasion of various concerts, are only the latest step in a passion that burst forth several years ago in a collection of poems dedicated to her. What emerges from these images is above all the great singer-songwriter’s incredible abilities as a performer who expresses all her energy and charisma onstage. Always portrayed close up while she’s singing, playing guitar, reading poetry or thanking the public, in these images Patti Smith appears precisely as Fernanda Pivano describes her in the introduction: “Beautiful and so frenzied as to seem ugly, with her eternally uncombed hair and her wilfully tattered clothes, insolent and sensitive, theatrical and the perfect professional”. As well as Pivano’s text, which covers the poetess-singer’s life and her relationship with American counterculture, there’s an essay by Claudio Marra recalling Patti Smith as the early muse of master photographers such as Mapplethorpe, who did many of her album covers, and her own subsequent role as a talented photographer. Lastly, The Times music critic John Rockwell analyses Patti’s artistic evolution before and after the years of isolation, during her marriage to MC5 guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith.

Painter and photographer Fabio Torre graduated in History of Art at the University of Bologna, his hometown where he still lives and works. He has held numerous exhibitions in public and private spaces. The figure of Patti Smith has been a presence in his research over recent years and he has put on several exhibitions on the theme at Studio G7 in Bologna, the Fabio Paris Gallery in Brescia and the Marena Rooms Gallery in Turin. He has also dedicated a book of poetry to Patti Smith: A Soldier with no Shoes (L’Obliquo).