Red Bull Illume 2019 travels to Bruneck, Italy
The 2019 Red Bull Illume finalist images are exhibited on 2x2 meter lightboxes scattered around the town hall square. From today, 19 December, until January 6, 2020 the visitors are invited to take a look at the world’s best adventure and action sport photographs. Thanks to the illumination system, the photos will be "turned on" after sunset, when the sky gets dark.
Located in the heart of the Pustertal Valley, Bruneck is not only worth a visit for this great exhibition but also because this town combines wonderful characteristics of the region.
Bruneck is close to some of the best Italian ski resorts and it also offers a long list of activities, like ski touring, hiking and climbing. These are just a few examples of the exciting options the region offers, so it' definitely worth booking a winter holiday in this valley.
For these reasons, Bruneck is the perfect location to put under the spotlight those who are often forgotten when going to a photographic exhibition: the unsung heroes behind the camera - the photographers who capture the magic. With this exhibition Red Bull Illume wants to celebrate the careful eye behind the lens and invites the visitors to become immersed in the energy, spirit and creativity of the inspiring images.
More on the contest
Image Quest 2019 has been the fifth edition and has evolved with two exciting new categories: Best of Instagram by SanDisk and the Moving Image category. The Best of Instagram by SanDisk has already announced the five monthly winners. Photographers could all submit their best images on redbullillume.com.
In 2019, 59,551 images were submitted by thousands of photographers with entries from all around the world breaking the record of photos submitted.
The judging panel was composed of fifty photo editors and digital experts, who have selected the 60 finalists, 11 for the category winners and 1 overall winner, all unveiled at the Winner Award Ceremony at the LUMEN - Museum of Mountain Photography, Plan de Corones, Italy on November 20, 2019.
After the unveiling, the finalist photographs travel around the world with the Red Bull Illume Tour, to capitals and cultural hubs.
Official partners include the Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony, storage specialists SanDisk, award-winning photo software company Skylum, makers of Luminar 3 photo editing suite and COOPH, photography apparel and accessories.
CCS digital_fabric® is the manufacturer of the 2x2 meter lightboxes for the Red Bull Illume exhibtion.
Street photography in Coney Island
When the temperature rises, Coney Island's boardwalk reemerges with the energy accumulated during the colder months. People from all over New York City take the subway down to South Brooklyn to enjoy the beach and amusement parks of the place once known as "The People's Playground."
During its complex history, the neighborhood has experienced moments of glory, darkness, and a long period of decline after the great depression. More recently, Coney Island is undergoing an attempt to revitalize and is visited by people from many different backgrounds. Significant investments are now sharing the space with traditional local projects. While some consider these investments a way to re-create the "People's Playground", others are concerned with the impact that big real estate developers can cause in the area.
This street photography series started in 2017 and aims to capture the life and interactions of the famous boardwalk at this specific moment in its long journey.
About the author:
Nei Valente is a Brazilian designer and street photographer, currently working at Design Bridge — NY.
Humans of Naples by Vincenzo Noletto
We had the chance to virtually sit down with Vincenzo Noletto. We stumbled on his project a while ago when one of our editors decided to write a story on Naples: the result was a miscellaneous and colourful collaboration among different people; the story of a city with a beating and lively heart, populated by beautiful souls who do not accept their home to be thrown under the dark light of the malavita. This desire to fight prejudice is the lifeblood of Vincenzo’s Humans of Naples: a beautiful, yet real, kaleidoscope of faces and stories.
Positive: Tell us something about you...
Vincenzo: My name is Vincenzo Noletto, I am 31 years old, I decided to spend my life taking photographs.
P: How did you enter the world of photography?
Vincenzo: I arrived to it quite late, compared to the “I have been shooting since I was born” type of photographers, I was 22 years old and I approached it after a never ending series of wrong choices and job changes. I stumbled on it thanks to a friend, to Instagram and the photographer Robert Herman. I went crazy looking at his pictures: they were taken with my same iPhone, I did not understand how he managed to achieve such beauty with my same phone!
So I started to study photography in a giant library, eventually I looked at all the photography books available there and I understood that the means you use to shoot is not as important as I thought. I started to take pictures with my iPhone. After a couple of months, I bought my first professional camera 7 years ago, but first I shoot with a film camera borrowed from a Neapolitan photographer (who used to hang out often at the local Apple store, where I worked).
One day I realised I did not enjoy what I was doing, I quitted my job and started my adventure in photography, I began as a photo-reporter for a local gazette.
Nowadays I juggle street-photography, portraiture, advertising, brand-communication, scene-photography, ceremonies. In other words: photography.
P: What do you use to take your photographs? How did you develop your style? There is someone - a photographer maybe - who has inspired you?
Vincenzo: Now I use everything. It took me a while to find my style, meaning how I like to put together my images and how I like to work. I had to understand who I was and who I am. I started with Nikon, now I use Fujifilm and Canon, but I worked with quite a few brands. Of course the equipment changes along with what I need to do, but in my work I like to use a 35mm (or an equivalent). When I do street photography I like to use a 28mm, which is what I used when I started with my iPhone.
My style is influenced by my identity search, by my interest in people and by my desire to tell and explain: you do not take a picture far from you, what you see is always the mirror of what the photographer sees.
I always found it hard to explain myself, to phrase what I was thinking, to add words to what I was watching, I was scared of the obvious. Through photography I found a way to be understood and to understand myself. Street-photography helped me learn how to walk on the streets, which along with portraiture and photo-reporting, are the main ingredients of my images.
If I have to tell you some photographers who inspired me, I would name Alex Webb, Joel Meyerovitz, Martin Parr, Garry Winogrand, Elliott Erwitt, William Klein, but there are so many more talents who nourished my interest in street photography. Steve McCurry comes to mind, he is beloved and hated at the same time, when I approached this world I devoured his books, even though he has nothing to do with street-photography. Yet, maybe my pictures have nothing to do with theirs in a strict sense.
P: For how long have you been working on Human of Naples and how did it start?
Vincenzo: I started it in November 2013, I got the idea washing a pot. I was struck by the idea. At that time I had the chance to work with some Erasmus students studying in Italy, I was impressed that some of the prejudices and cliches related to Neapolitan people arrived to Japan. Furthermore, every time I dealt with people from other Italian cities they would always be like “you do not look like somebody from Naples” or “people from Naples are all alike”, which is absurd coming from people who have never been here.
With Humans of New York in mind I thought “I will have the rest of world meet the Neapolitans, the real ones, who you meet in the street, no filters”.
I had four questions in mind - the same ones for everybody - that could recap the person’s life, while creating empathy between the subject and the one who is looking at it.
[quote_box name=""]It is starting to look like a giant family album, but it was not something I had in mind. [/quote_box]
P: How does it feel to approach these strangers and, with four straightforward questions, to dig in their intimate memories?
Vincenzo: It is the best part, even though it is quite personal and hard to grasp.
While I walk on the street, camera hanging from my neck, I look for that something in people’s eyes. It’s not aesthetic or my personal taste: I look for it and I am never disappointed.
This makes me think that: a. either I am good at it, or b. maybe we do not always have in mind how complicated other people’s lives can be and how many shared experience there are.
P: Did you have the chance to meet with people you already photographed? Maybe taking again their picture? Did you notice some changes in their answers?
Vincenzo: Of course! Naples is big and yet small, it is always nice to meet again people from the project. Often they remember the answers they gave me, sometimes they tell me their friends’ reactions reading their reply, it feels like they take that moment as a before-after one. Many decide to tell me something more, yet nobody gets another picture:
[quote_box name=""]images are the portrait of a moment that will not come back, Humans of Naples is the mirror of an evolution, a moment of change.[/quote_box]
P: Are there any pictures you are particularly fond of? Some answers, maybe?
Vincenzo: Hard one, it is like asking to a parent which one of his children he prefers. I can tell you that all my pictures are important. Without the first one I would have not taken the 700th, surely I will not stop now. Some of these pictures have a special place in my heart, for that particular moment: the memory of it will always stay in my mind.
I was impressed by a lot of the answers I got, but it always leaves me speechless when I get to know something that these people have not told their significant others. Some of these stories do not appear on this project, so I feel like I am safe-keeping them, I will never tell them to a soul.
P: What about the reception of the project?
Vincenzo: It is funny of you to ask. You are in Venice and you know it… this makes me think that the project travelled quite a lot.
In Naples it is well-known, which has its ups and downs, what I want is for it to travel outside this city, that is the point of it.
A month ago I spoke about it at an Italian Radio (Radio Deejay). I am really happy about it, if they called me to talk about it in front of such a big crowd it means I am walking the right path… and I will not stop.
To read the stories of Humans of Naples, click here
Street Photo Milano - the Henkin brothers' treasure
This year's edition of Street Photo Milano is going to be special: for the first time in Western Europe the photographic archive of Evgeny and Yakov Henkin will be put together in an exhibition: Evgeny and Yakov Henkin: from darkness to light. A new-found treasure.
The archive puts together photos from Russia to Germany in the Twenties. The pictures have been found in 2010, portraiting life between wars in these two countries. These photographs can be considered street photography at its beginning. The brothers shot with a Leica but never developed the films, until 2010 when they have been found and collected by the Association Henkin Brothers Archive – HBAA in Losanne. The photos show how life was during the 20s in Berlin and Leningrad, the gestures, the smiles, the eyes, the style. Daily life before politics changed the course of events; on one side Stalin, on the other Hitler. Both leading to the death of the photographers. The little selection of photos presented in Milan has been developed by Photofuture of Cagliari on Canson paper.
[quote_box name=""]The enchanting magic of photography is here highlighted to confirm the value of human life and the authenticity of the historical moment: they are images that preserve ourselves and our memory. Gueorgui Pinkhassov[/quote_box]
Street Photo Milano will take place from the 16th to the 19th of May at BASE Milano with the support of the main sponsor Leica. Like every year, the festival's purpose is to encourage interactions between experienced photographers and up-and-comers; between critics, amateurs and collectives. Photography is a medium through which one can seethe world's changes and this festival helps put together an interesting, dense programme with talks, workshops, exhibitions, contests. These contests are promoted with the collaboration of also Miami Street Photography Festival and give the opportunity to exhibit in Milan in May and in December in The fiMiami during the American festival. The first contest is Italy Photo Series: it's dedicated to photographs shot in Italy, showing daily routines through a series of 3 to 6 photographs. Emerging Photographer Exhibition Contest is dedicated to all up-and-coming photographers around the world, giving them the chance to have their one personal exhibition.
This year's edition is going to be a rich one with more than 250 photographs in 7 exhibitions: Jacob Aue Sobol, Matt Stuart, Fulvio Bugani, Observe Collective, Finalists Miami Street Photography Festival 2018, Finalists
Street Photo Milano 2019 e Evgeny e Yakov Henkin: from darkness to light. A new-found treasure. The guests will be Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Jacob Aue Sobol, Matt Stuart, Fulvio Bugani, Eolo Perfido, Camilla Ferrari, Chris Suspect, Emilio Barillaro, Fadi Boukaram, Marco Casino, Andrew Kochanovski, Michael May, Andrea Pontini, Eléonore Simon, Olga Walther with the contribution of the collectives Eyegobananas and Observe. Besides the two contests, there will also be the Portfolio Review, Night Walk, Street Battle and Photo Slam.
Looking for A dream: a project by Nicolò Bernardi
Looking for A dream explores the true meaning of the American Dream, always suspended between desire and reality, illusion and disappointment, hope and success, between present and future. Living in America means living a suspended reality, sometimes far from the daily life you were used to coming from somewhere else in the world but deeply metaphorical and representative of our society.
Looking for A dream portraits American urban life with a sense of holiness an mystery. Urban scenes are elevated and become a representation of something beyond reality, a visual metaphor of the dream.
The project is on show at Public Store in Padova (Italy) until January, 26th and is made of 22 photos taken in New York during the last year. The exhibition is curated by Matteo Sartori, a Designer and Art Director working and living in Padova.
About the author:
Nicolò Bernardi is a Graphic Designer and Photographer, Nicolò lives in New York working as a Graphic Designer and has always experimented with photography. He is a contributor of Office Magazine.
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Shane Taylor: a psychological street photographer
What is your study background?
My background is in design. I don’t have a formal education in photography. Everything I’ve learned has been self-taught, compelled by an exaggerated sense of curiosity (the best way to learn anything).
When did you start taking pictures and what camera did you use?
I started in my late twenties with a borrowed Canon EOS 3000n film camera. I had very bad social anxiety and found it difficult to leave my parents house. Through boredom, I picked up my sister’s camera and took a few shots in my grandmother’s derelict house. When I got them back from processing I fell in love with photography. They weren’t technically good photos, but they had some kind of energy to them which completely floored me. I couldn’t believe I’d taken them. A couple of years later I moved to Dublin for design school. I started doing street photography as a way of forcing myself to overcome social anxiety. Every time I left the house I felt better. I used the college library to read every photobook I could find. I watched photography documentaries over and over, like ‘Contacts’ and ‘Pen, Brush & Camera’. I kept shooting and then felt confident enough to post work to flickr and instagram. I didn’t get much engagement for months, but it felt good to put stuff out there.
How did you develop your style? Did you start from Instagram?
I didn’t even realise I had a style until another photographer described me as a ‘psychological street photographer’. I think that’s fairly accurate. I’m fascinated by how photography can describe inner emotion, whether it’s a sitting portrait or an isolated subject in a sea of people on a high street.
I started from Instagram but I’m much more influenced by photographers like Larry Fink, Robert Frank, and Harry Callahan, whose brilliant ‘women lost in thought’ series is a big influence. Like him, I shoot with a long lens while walking through busy streets.
Were you always interested in street photography, even though some of your photos look like portraiture?
I love portraiture but I’m not sure if I have the patience or personality type for it. Really good portraiture takes a lot of time and social skill in getting the subject’s guard down. I get around it by taking the portrait without the subject being aware of me.
Street portraiture, by which I mean, anouncing yourself and asking permission, has never really interested me. I think it’s too stiff. There’s just not enough time to get a sincere portrait of someone within 5mins of meeting them. There’s far too much self awareness and tension. You end up with a lifeless document of the surface; their clothes and the environment.
When do you consider someone or something a good shot?
It has to be a photo that goes straight to the heart and blood and takes some time to reach the brain. I’m not that concerned with composition or many technical aspects, except contrast. If it feels like a good shot I’ll usually know right away- as soon as I’ve taken it.
What is the most difficult part of photographing people on the streets?
The hardest part for me, is making myself do it when my social anxiety gets bad. Sometimes I’ll have my gear packed, coat on and headphones in but I’ll stand behind my front door thinking about all the negative things that are definitely going to happen. Always, always I remind myself that once I go out there I’ll feel better. Never have I gone out and felt worse. Bill Cunningham said — “I go out every day. When I get depressed at the office, I go out, and as soon as I’m on the street I feel better”. I relate to that very strongly.
What subject satisfies you the most?
A stranger in a state of grace, who has let their guard down. They’re unaware of me photographing them and I’m given a chance to frame it before I disturb them.
Just as important, is sharing that photo and watching other strangers relate to them.
Picfair: Women behind the lens
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he famous image library Picfair has launched an international competition to celebrate Women in photography of all levels, promoting their works to buyers all over the world in the categories of Nature, Architecture, Portrait and Street Level. Women Behind the Lens is open from the 26th of October and will be until the 26th of November.
Picfair has created a new model for image licensing: anyone can license an image from any photographer, connecting buyers and sellers directly and rewarding creativity in a fair way. The library is a combination of award-winning professionals and talented amateurs, and where millions of images are uploaded by thousands of photograph users from all around the world. As part of its main purpose, Picfair wants to help set right the current gender imbalance across the photographic industries by providing a platform for under-represented female point of views and providing more interesting, authentic and representative stock photography for its use in publishing, marketing and advertising.
Women photographers are not sufficiently represented in the photographic industriesand whilst the gender balance within university courses and fine art photography is much more even, it is within the commercial and professional landscape that there is still a huge imbalance between the practicing number of men and women. Only 2% of photographers on the books at the major commercial agencies are women, and just 5% of the images used by leading photography publishers are from the cameras of women photographers. For every woman working for the major camera brands, there are 6 men.
Benji Layado, founder of Picfair, comments on this fact:
[quote_box name=""]Picfair was formed to make stock photography fairer, and more representative. By opening our doors to every type of photographer, from every type of background, we believe we can give image buyers more authentic, lesser-seen perspectives of the world. But, frustratingly, we suffer from the same gender disparity. Among our 28,000 photographers from across the globe, women are a clear minority. It’s troubled us since we launched. In launching the Women Behind The Lens competition, we hope to start addressing this disparity, while showcasing the exceptional quality of female photography across the world.[/quote_box]
The entry categories for the competition are:
Nature: The natural world is a place of inspiration, whether it’s celebrating the majesty of wild landscapes, or focusing on the impact humans have had on the world around us.
Portrait: Capturing the essence of someone's character is one of photography’s greatest challenges, but you can create some of the most arresting images in the genre.
Architecture: the majority of the world’s population now live in cities, but whether for good or ill, cities are here to stay and photographers are here to document them in all their complexity.
Street Level: There’s a special dynamic that happens at street level. It’s a place of unexpected encounters, serendipitous events and where the boundary between indoors and outdoors blurs. From high fashion to high drama, photography has always had a home on the street.
Once digital submissions are uploaded on the website, the entrants work will be available to licence via the platform. As with every image uploaded to Picfair, full copyright will remain with the photographers, and the entrants will be in full control of the fees they require if one of their customers wish to license their work. Unlike other large agencies who take 74% of royalties from the photographers, Picfair allows photographer to choose their own license prices, and add only 20% on top.
For the competition five photographers will be shortlisted for each category, with an overall winner for each category selected from these five. The shortlisted photographers will be announced on 4 December, followed by the winners’ announcement on 11 December.
Stories from Manhattan: Fifth Avenuers
[dropcap type="1"]S[/dropcap]ome of the most famous museums in New York—like MoMA, the Met, and the Guggenheim—attract art-conscious locals and tourists alike. Others are attracted to Fifth Avenue by its proximity to Central Park and the ostentatious tall buildings that line the avenue, including the Empire State and Flatiron buildings, Rockefeller Center, and Trump Tower.
Those who can afford to, shop along one of the most well-known and high-end shopping streets in the world. Store employees, construction workers, and street vendors are combined, and sometimes contrasted, with the people who work in the tall buildings and walk on the avenue during their commute. To further add to the energy and bustling atmosphere, the street hosts important events like the LGBT Pride March, Puerto Rican Day Parade, and St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
For a couple of months, Valente walked along Fifth Avenue trying to capture the specific things that encapsulated the vibrancy of the avenue. He believes that if you paint a canvas with fifty black dots and add just one red dot, your painting is no longer about the fifty black dots. But it’s also not about the red dot. The painting is about the relationship of the fifty dots that look the same with that one different red dot. That’s what Valente had in mind when photographing the avenue during his lunch breaks. He was always imagining the street as a canvas and trying to include in his photos the interactions and people that would be the red dot, representing a specific moment on Fifth Avenue. Because, to accurately represent a place, you can’t photograph only the ordinary people and scenes, but also must capture what contrasts with the normality and thus makes that place special enough to be photographed.
About the author:
Nei Valente is a young street photographer born in 1989 in Brasília, Brazil. He is current living in New York, where he divides his time between street photography and his work as a graphic designer at Brand Union. His work have been published by websites like BuzzFeed, Spiegel, Fubiz, DesignYouTrust, and Trendland, and exhibited in galleries in the United States and Holland.
Do you want to read more stories connected with Manhattan? Check it out here.
INTERVIEW WITH... SAFIA DELTA
Our daily interview is with Safia Delta, a photographer based in Paris. She comes from the South of France and she started almost 2 years ago to take photos. She's passionate about street photography and she like to document about those inner trips she takes in her everyday life.
When did you start to think about photography?
When the weight of words and the noise my thoughts made became overwhelming, I found in photography’s silence a time-to-time shelter. It became a means to cope with my dissatisfaction with life. I used to shoot with my mobile at that time, mostly making shadow self-portraits like Vivian Meier did. Shooting with a mobile was handy, I carried it with me most of the time and it was easy to operate. Today, I shoot analog and am really enjoying the slowness of the process and the results.
What does photography mean to you? and which kind of photography do you like more?
It is a way to turn flaws into something meaningful, give shape to the things I experience, freezing them in time. But it’s also a way to connect to the present, to myself and to my surroundings, it’s a form of meditation. And the camera both acts like a go-between and a mirror disclosing the relationship I have to my environment. When I’m out shooting I’m not looking for something ; I just walk, relax and try to be careful to what life puts on my way.
Because of its complexity, its physicality and its sensuality colour is my favourite medium. My favourite photographers are colorists like William Eggleston, Harry Gruyaert and photographers who indulge in documentaries and narratives like Alec Soth, Christopher Anderson or Cédric Delsaux.
When you take a portrait, what is important for you?
It depends on how I feel. When I feel attracted to something, I try to be as unobtrusive as possible, I try not to interfere, not to break the moment and preserve its beauty.
Or on the contrary, I interact openly with my subject and let things flow and see what comes out of it.
Do you think it's important to follow a school to learn how to shoot?
Definitely not though in our time when it comes to thinking photography and self-promoting a body of work schools offer tools to acquire a certain know-how. But they won’t teach sensitivity. Life is the best teacher I know. I believe that what we go through –however positive or negative- nourishes our sensitivity and intimately influences the way we look at things thus determining the creative direction we take.
What's the photo you want to take and you never did?
I don’t dream of a single shot, it would more be a series, a consistent work on a project at the fringe of intimacy and documentary. But I prefer marvelling at that unpredictable capacity we have to evolve and let things open. Time is an ally.
What's your photo-mission?
Proving to myself that I’m more often than not wrong. That though I sometimes think I have reached a limit in my work, it is but a wall of dust, negativity and illusion. I don’t know if the possibilities are unlimited but their contours sure are broader than we imagine. And watching these boundaries fade and others rise and so on is a pleasure per se because my sole desire is to maintain my photography alive and document my environment and the society I live in genuinely, trusting my instinct and giving room to imperfection and uncertainty. My photographs are also a reminder that disclosing implies withholding, that reality is like sand slipping through our fingers. It is an invitation to be faced with reality’s opacity.
GIANLUCA DE SIMONE
Photography by Gianluca De Simone
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
I was born in Rome and ever since I can remember I've had an interest in the visual arts in one form or another. In 2006 I quit my job in TV production and moved to Australia, where I lived for seven years working all kinds of jobs, from waiter to cleaner to dock-hand. I wanted to be a screenwriter. The writing started to do my head in a little. I was also getting a little tired of moving heavy things around for a living. Photography only became an obsession a few years ago, while going through a pretty rough patch. So I tried to turn that obsession into a job, while shooting every day in the streets. I came back to Italy in March this year and I had my first exhibition in the circuit of Fotografia - International Photography Festival in Rome, with a work I did together with photographer Francesca Pompei in a former psychiatric institution. It'll be on until October the 31st and it's called "Passato Prossimo" (Present Perfect).
How would you describe yourself and your personality?
I guess you should ask to the people who know me... I would say I am quiet, a bit introverted, unstructured, sometimes obsessive, sometimes lazy, and I try to keep open to anyone and any experience.
What inspires you? Who were the first artists that inspired you?
Many artists had a great influence on me, actually I'm pretty sure that some of them saved my life even though they don't know it. Not necessarily photographers but also writers, painters, musicians, too many to mention. Music inspires me a lot. A photographer that I really love since the first time I saw his work is Robert Frank, both his early and later work. Also Adré Kertész, William Klein. These guys will never die. And Daido Moriyama, Mario Giacometti, Lee Friedlander. Others, who have quite a different style, are William Eggleston and the Italian photographers Luigi Ghirri and Gabriele Basilico. More recently Martin Bogren, Marc Trivier, the Korean artist Jungjin Lee. Of my generation I like the work of my good friend Lorenzo Castore. These and many others' work inspires me every time I look at it. And the real world, the world out there, whatever it is, inspires me when I am able to really see it. Sometimes I have the feeling I can really see only while taking photos.
How did you start taking photos?
I don't remember exactly when but I was very young, playing around with my father's camera, a Nikon F2 which I still own. He was an amateur photographer who took some pretty good photos. Growing up I developed a passion for all kinds of visual arts but for some reason I never had the real notion it could be turned into a way of living until much later. I started taking photos constantly only a few years ago, and that happened without a conscious decision. It was more a psychiatric condition, if I had to describe it.
What do you want your viewers to take away from your work?
The best thing would be to feel the truth of that moment, even though you don't know what it is. A photo is open to the viewer's interpretation but it can only work if the moment is truthful, if the photographer's reaction to that moment is honest. The best answer I know of is Robert Frank's: "When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read the line of a poem twice". That would be really great.
Do you take portraits? And if so, in a portrait, what is important for you?
I do take portraits sometimes, and what I try to capture is an unguarded or spontaneous moment, more than a technical element. So I prefer to work in a loose situation, not very structured, trying to be at ease, without the feeling of someone sitting and ready for a portrait.
Do you think it’s important to follow a school to learn how to shoot?
It isn't strictly necessary, as many great photographers haven't studied in a school. But I think it can be useful, if one can, to buy the time to really focus on one's passion, having the time and means to go deeper, with some experienced advice. But I think the most important thing is to go out and take photos as much as you can, it's the best way to learn. That's definitely necessary to me.
Is there a personal project that you've had in your mind that you haven’t done, and that you probably will never do?
There are many personal projects I would like to do and I hope I'll get the chance to work at least on a few of them. One that I will never have the chance to do is to document the period in which my father passed away. I wasn't taking photos as I do now at that time, and also I am not sure if I would have had the strength to follow it through.
Where's one place you dream of taking photographs?
Inside my head.
Why do you take photos?
I don't think there's a rational answer to that question. I would say because it keeps me alive, and it has kept me alive in difficult circumstances. There is certainly a sense of gratitude in me towards photography. It also makes me feel good while doing it, to me it's almost like a form of meditation.
What keeps you going?
Sometimes even bad feelings can keep you going. A feeling of failure, of not knowing what to do, it can be turned into a source of great energy, it can push you forward, and sometimes your best work can come out of that. Otherwise it can be a feeling of some kind of beauty, something you cannot grasp and yet you keep on chasing it, something that's not usually visible and yet you would like to capture it and show it. The feeling that something meaningful to you and other people might be carved out of reality and shaped and put back into the world. Also the basic need to get in touch with the outside world and get out of your head, of your own mind.