photographic projects

This post was somehow inspired by a conversation I had on the On Taking Pictures Google+ group¹. It was something I wanted to talk about for a long time.

I have always enjoyed linking a series of photographs into something more organic. The lonely (even if beautiful) photo does not satisfy my hunger, exactly like 50g of pasta are never enough for me. The excitement for getting a single good (or even excellent) shot is just too short-lived, it just feels to me like an isolated thing with no anchors.

And from that conversation I had on Google+ I understand that I’m not alone in this, and others enjoy the art of creating stories visually.

Now what is the problem: that somehow reportages ought to be of momentous things (war in Afghanistan, struggles of unlucky souls, death of somebody possibly due to exceptional situations), at least according to the general consensus.

But what I do are normal things², have a normal life, and the stories I want to tell with my photographs are simple, straightforward, sometimes intimate little stories.

So my kind of reportage is not in line with what most people would rate as interesting or worth considering. Do I really care about it? Well not really, mainly because I do this (this being the blog, taking photographs, writing about it, etc.) for myself, because in some unexplicable way this is an activity that gives me pleasure and sooths my soul.

Then there is a hidden desire deep inside of me that there will be somebody, someday, finding pleasure in rediscovering these stories. It could be my daughter, thirty years from now; or even myself when I’ll be seriously old and will not be able to remember exactly what were the things that moved me back when I was ‘young’.

And here’s another thought about the necessity nowadays to photograph only extra-ordinary things: it seems to me like everybody wants to escape the normality, and nobody enjoys or truly appreciate a conventional life — at least at a subconscious level.

Take my friend Dylan for example: his photographic heroes are Steve McCurry and other war photographers; he dreams of leaving his town to go in faraway places so that he can see different things, and these different things would in turn ignite his photographic eye, his creativity.

But I tell him that a good photographer creates beauty where there’s crap; good visual storytelling should hook the reader whatever story is on, whether it is following a group of marines demining s field in Iraq or massaging pizza dough for a dinner with friends.

And this is hard for me to say because I have always been (and still am) a dreamer, but I am becoming more attached to simpler, less ambitious projects. Maybe this is a state that you reach because when you’re past 40 you finally understand that not all dreams can come true; in my case however this has happened with no real drama. My being happy and content with what I’ve got is truly a blissful state of mind. Has it arrived because of Valentina (=baby daughter for those of you who just happen to be here by chance) ? Maybe it has; maybe the enjoyment that she feels for whatever little discovery she makes is something that inspires me, much more than dreaming of faraway places, of a stellar pay, of any social rewards³.

So that’s my long-winding introduction to two posts I have recently published here with very little details.

architetti al lavoro

This is about a Saturday morning when we were discussing with my father and sister-in-law and their young assistant Francesco (all of them architects) the renewal of our future house. There was also my daughter playing with us, and a hint of the retro-chic new Nikon camera thrown in the mix.

ultimi giochi

With this story I wanted to remember the last day that Valentina and Gemma played together. Gemma is moving to Norway with her parents who are very good friend of ours. So I felt a little taken aback by the realization that despite the sheer joy and fun that these two babies were radiating on such a gloomy afternoon, who knows when they will play together again.

On top of that, Gemma’s parents are not only Gemma’s parents but primarily two good friends that I was losing; because despite all the social networks of this world physical closeness is impossible to match.

Valentina was 15 months old and Gemma 18 months. Maybe, hopefully, they will get back together to play in the future, but they will change, and maybe Valentina will lose her ability to make Gemma laugh whatever she does, who knows; when they meet again they will talk, be older for sure and at the speed these kids grow I have no idea what they’ll become.

Technically I’ve put here also some shots that are not really that great, I know that, but I felt that in the economy of the story they were adding something. When darkness came I used my flash which I never do so technique is lacking there; I used it off-camera with no modifiers.