THE LONGEST WAY HOME – THE IMAGES

My first personal exhibition has ended. For those of you who didn’t make it, here are some of the images that were shown. These images are a collection of my works, from the moment I’ve started taking pictures till now. For me, It was a good way to remember all the steps that I did to become the photographer I am now, and along with this, who I became. “The longest way home” really intended to be this: the road that each of us do everyday to become who we are. In my case, I had to go far away from Italy, my home, to study at the Brooks Institute of photography in Santa Barbara, California.

From the exhibition manifesto:

“There are people who are satisfied with what they have. Some other can appreciate what they have only when this is lost. Like me. For this reason traveling is something that I need, beyond being a pleasure. It’s the need of let everything go, to take a break from everyday’s life to really understand its value. But travelling is also memory, and photography is what makes it still alive and present. It let us go back to moments that would be lost otherwise. And it lets us relive them, and mostly, it let us understand what they meant to us.

This photographs are exactly the attempt to go back to places and emotions that are far away, to better understand them. Through this photographs of places, people or animals, it relives my memory and my unconscious gaze on it. The famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson used to say that to photograph means putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis. If photographing is really this act, then a photograph is the tangible result of it to which another ingredient is added: memory.

It is only thanks to memory that we can say who we are. It is only our story that defines us as unique and diverse from each other.

“It’s not were you are at, It’s the journey you’ve taken.”

THE LONGEST WAY HOME

I’m really happy to announce that my first personal exhibition is going to take place at the Queriniana library in my own town, Brescia, tomorrow, friday December 16th. It’s a great honor and pleasure for me, because I’m currently living in Santa Barbara: it’s nice to be able to go back to my own town and share what I do with my people. The show is going to end on December 30th, so if you are around, come and take a look! I would love to have a feedback.

The exhibition is going to be at the Queriniana Library of Brescia (photos below). It’s a great location with beautiful paintings and old books: it feels great to have my work displayed in such a cool place.

I would like to thank all the people who helped me in doing this. A special thank to Mario Baldoli, Andrea Zucchini and Piera Maculotti for the precious help.

Sono molto felice di avere la mia prima mostra personale domani, venerdì 16 Dicembre, alla biblioteca Queriniana della mia città, Brescia. Vivendo a Santa Barbara, per me è un grande onore e un grande piacere condividere con le persone della mia città il mio lavoro. La mostra durerà fino al 31 Dicembre, se siete da queste parti, fateci un salto!

La mostra sarà in una biblioteca con affreschi stupendi e antichi libri: è bello poter esporre i miei lavori in un ambiente del genere.

Vorrei ringraziare tutti quelli che mi hanno aiutato a rendere questo possibile. Un ringraziamento speciale a Mario Baldoli, Andrea Zucchini, e Piera Maculotti.

Waking up again

It’s been so long since my last blog post! It feels like a year have passed. I’ve been very busy that I forgot to update my blog, forgetting that you write for others as much as you do it for yourself. So i’m promising to you and to myself, that i’ll post some of my new works and thoughts, because i really feel the need to! No photos now, but a lot will come.
Stay tuned…

Jeff Clark

I have the pleasure to work for Jeff Clark part-time (you can check his website here). He’s a great photographer and friend. He has a great project going on: shooting bike racers in a unique way. In fact, he shot them right after they’ve finished the race, tired, sweating and still heavily breathing from the strain. In addition to this he used a white background so that you think they are in a studio. But guess what, you can see where they are from their eyes or from the visor on their helmet. And I love this. Totally unique. By the way, Lance Armstrong is between those racers…

This is an editorial portrait I’ve shot in his old studio. The place was already cool to me but he moved into a new studio which is “so rad”, as he say. And I agree.

Airports

A few days ago I flew back from Santa Barbara to my home, in Italy. The journey was very long: 2 hours on a bus to L.A. airport, 3 hours of wait, 12 of flight to London, 4 hours waiting for the flight to Milan, 2 hours flight, and 1 hour to drive home. For a total of 24 Hours, 4 meals, 1 1/4 red wine and 1 small Jack Daniels to get some sleep, 2 movies, 1 episode of Mad men, 2 hours photoshopping, 5 times in the toilet, 0 words to the guy next to me. That’s a record! He actually never went to the toilet, and never moved from his seat. For 12 hours. I really envy him…

But a part from this, It’s fun if you live it as a time to relax, and to enjoying what the traveling is: discovering things that are new for you. My last session at school has been really intense, and this was the first time (in a long time) that I could shoot some pictures for myself, without having to think about preparing the shot, worrying about the style, the mood, or the lighting. The lighting!  I’ve spent the last four months modifying the existing light with speedlights, strobes, umbrellas, softoboxes and beauty dishes, so that walking around just with my camera was a dream come true. It’s a different approach, you just use the existing light, there’s not much else you can do. So this is basically what determines what you’ll be shooting. Modifying the existing light has a more active and creative side, but to shoot with the ambient light, it means to evaluate it and most of the time, you’ll have just to go with it. One is a creative way, the other is an observational way (which is creative too in a different way).

Anyway, I love airports, there are so many different stories to watch. If you have the time and your flight is late, I suggest you just look around you. You’ll discover that people are amazing, and even if everybody is there just to go somewhere else, everybody carries his own, unique story. This is what I  was thinking when I walked into the shots with the people I made (you can see them down below). Light helped me a lot in this, as people were walking from darkness to light, like when somebody is a complete stranger to you and when you notice him, he starts to become familiar. (I wonder who is the C.I.A. guy with the badge, and the guy that look like a bad guy from an action movie, giving the signal to blow up the airport with his earphones whenever he wants to).

This is the story of the trip from LAX-London Heathrow, London Heathrow-Milan Linate, and of the people that took part of it on Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th of April 2012.

Classmates

A few months ago I’ve shot these pictures of my friends Ben, Chelsea and Lexus. I’ve stumbled on ‘em today while I was selecting some images to print for a portfolio review. Even if it wasn’t that much ago, it really feels like years, for how much I’ve been working lately!

Here they are.

PATH contest

I’ve got the honor to have two pictures selected to be shown al the Gallery 27 at the Brooks Institute of photography in Santa Barbara. There will be an exhibition with the theme “The Path” from May 3rd to June 15th. If you are around come and give it a look. Along with my pictures, there will be other very talented photographer, and I’m really grateful to have my works displayed with some photographers that are a real inspiration to me, like Chris Broughton (you can check his website by clicking here).

These are the photos they’ve selected. The first is taken in Sori, Italy, where I spend almost every summer of my life (my mother is in fact born in Genova). The other one is a picture that I took here in Santa Barbara on a foggy and cold night. I like the fact that these photos represent together my old and my new life, and the person I am today. To me the path is the road we travel to be who we are, and the beauty of it, the beauty of a travel, is not in arriving somewhere, but resides in the road we walked. This is why I’m really happy that both these two photos have been selected, they tell together a bigger story of myself, showing the road that made me to the person I am today.