Fresh from My Darkroom: Cleaning the Statues at the Villa Olmo in Como

After years of being abandoned, the statues at the Villa Olmo are finally being restored by a group of volunteers from a local Fine Arts academy. With my lovely Zorki 6 rangefinder, I documented one phase of this praiseworthy work. Take a look!

A few months ago, I published an article titled, “The Girl with the Scarred Face” which is dedicated to the great fashion photographer Juergen Teller. There, I showed some pictures of the old sculptures at the Villa Olmo park in the city of Como. Covered in dirt and moss, the sculptures were in a state of abandon for many decades.

Since last summer, some volunteers from the local Fine Arts Academy Aldo Galli, in collaboration with the Soroptimist Association, have been working passionately and patiently in bringing new life to these beautiful sculptures. With my Zorki 6, I documented the last phase of their work. In the first photo, you can see a sculpture and the fountain behind it restored and cleaned.

Between the end of October and the beginning of November, a number of skillful ladies continued cleaning the remaining sculptures around the fountain.

For this procedure, they avoided using chemical products when possible. For the most part, only water sprays and small brushes were used.

Below is a close-up photo of the cleaning procedure.

Day after day, the garden slowly returned to its original splendor!

Take a look at the photos in this album, taken in May this year, and compare them with the images in this article. These ladies are surely doing a great job!

To document this great initiative, I chose a roll of Ilford FP4+ developed in R09 Rodinal One Shot.

written by sirio174 on 2014-11-17 #lifestyle #sculptures #statues #italy #restoration #como #requested-post #villa-olmo #fresh-from-the-lab #fresh-from-my-darkroom #fine-arts-academy-aldo-galli