Artists’ books: the donation by Charles Johnstone

In recent weeks, the artist Charles T. Johnstone personally visited the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, inside the Mole Antonelliana, to enrich our collections with the last remaining exclusive copies of his most recent artistic publication, comprising around one hundred copies. 

Johnstone is a leading figure in contemporary experimental photography and one of the few artists to have consistently pursued an exploration of the Polaroid medium. In his work, he does not use instant film merely as a tool for capturing images, but as a living material. Each print is therefore a unique and unrepeatable piece. Johnstone, who currently lives in New York, has also exhibited his works in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin and Milan. His photographs form part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Museum of the City of New York, the International Centre of Photography and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

The artist has chosen to donate to the Museo Nazionale del Cinema the final copies of his works on five actresses from the 1960s: *Ciao Monica*, dedicated to Monica Vitti; *Au Revoir Anna*, on Anna Karina; *So Long Marianne*, dedicated to Marianne Faithfull; *Sayonara Setsuko*, on Setsuko Hara; and *Red Shoes*, dedicated to Moira Schearer. 

The Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin and the Met in New York are currently the only institutions to hold, in their respective collections, the complete set of all five volumes that make up the series. The set donated to the Museum represents a particularly significant core of its research. These are works that explore the relationship between the still image and the moving image, situated in that fascinating realm where photography and cinema meet and engage in dialogue. The instantaneous nature of the Polaroid – the way it takes shape in a matter of seconds before the viewer’s eyes – evokes the magic of a suspended frame, of an extended sense of time, a trace of light. The artist’s decision to personally hand over her works to the Museo Nazionale del Cinema bears witness to his deep connection with the history of moving images that the Museum preserves.

The donated works become part of the vast collection held by the Library and Mediatheque of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema and represent a fundamental part in the narrative of the evolution of analogue media and their rediscovery through a contemporary artistic lens.