Are they aliens or stars of a 21st Century burlesque? DAVID WHETSTONE talks to artist Maurizio Anzeri whose treatment of old photos has had Baltic visitors talking

MAURIZIO Anzeri’s exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art has divided its audience. It opened just recently but already I have met people who love it and others who find it disturbing. One person I know can’t bear to look at it.

There are two elements. The first consists of soft sculptures reminiscent of huge 18th Century periwigs. But it is the second, the pictures on the walls, which people have reacted strongly to.

Each is a black and white photographic portrait with the face either entirely or partially obscured by intricate and colourful embroidery.

There are degrees of oddness on display. In some of the photos, it looks as if the sitter had been prepared for an exotic tribal ritual. In others it’s as if a science fiction alien had dressed up as a human being in rather dated formal attire.

The artist told me: “I started to collect the photographs quite a few years ago but I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with them.

“It is all part of my fascination, my obsession, with the face. I see it as a landscape.

“Three years ago I was working on a project that involved drawing and embroidery. One day I started to embroider on one of the photographs and it started to develop into a much bigger body of work.”

Maurizio, who is from Loano in northern Italy but has lived in London for 20 years, said he didn’t know any of the people in the photographs. He had bought them in flea markets and most of them dated from the 1930s and 40s.

“They are old photographs and all quite formal. Nowadays you can have about 5,000 portraits made in a minute but what I like about these photographs is that they come from a time when people made a real effort to have their portrait done.

“People didn’t have as many chances in those days to have their photograph taken, so this was a big occasion.”

As with any old photos, there’s an air of sadness about the exhibition. As Maurizio explained, these were the sort of images that once enjoyed pride of place in a living room, either that of the sitter or a close relation.

Mostly they exude health, affection and well-being. They were intended to be reminders of the sitter seen at his or her best.

Yet here they were in flea markets, presumably having run out of people to treasure them.