Sandra Cattaneo Adorno: Scarti di Tempo

A photographic meditation on the elasticity of pandemic time

The latest body of work from American photographer Sandra Cattaneo Adorno (born 1954) offers a meditation on perception: how we experience time, memory, connection and the boundaries between reality and illusion. “Reflection, refractions and distortions abound, transforming the external world into a metaphor of the mind,” Cattaneo Adorno explains. Inspired by the memory of brightly colored, overlapping metal plates on a printing press, known as scarti (scraps), Cattaneo Adorno revisited her archives and began layering images during the pandemic. Scarti di Tempo can mean either “time discrepancy” or “lag time,” serving as a metaphor for how time—like waves of light or sound—can expand or contract. In much the same way, these photographs occasionally dissolve into abstraction while remaining tethered to reality. The book also contains a QR code that links to a score composed by the artist''s husband, which provides an opportunity to experience the harmony of image and sound.