“Photographers are collectors of glances”
I Photographer … “yofotografo”
My life has been entirely intertwined with photography ever since I took my first photo at the age of 8.
I’ve been fascinated by almost every form of art that exists. Art is vital, and I’ve loved life for as long as I can remember.
I believe art impacts you in two different ways. One is unconscious, which, for me, is the best because it stirs you, moves you, gives you pleasure without further conjectures of techniques, styles, or trends. The second is consciously, and therefore more intellectual, sophisticating the proposal, passing it to a more conceptual level. Both are perfectly valid and complementary.
In my case, photographic art made me cross the threshold from being a mere passive spectator to being an active creator who tries to capture with their camera what happens before them. As Elliot Erwitt said, “Photography is the art of observation.”
For me, photographing is part of my vital essence; I’ve always done it and have taken all kinds of photos. But if there’s something that attracts me above all to photograph, it’s Nature because I believe its forms and manifestations are art in its purest state.
Contrary to what Hegel claimed, I believe that the beauty of Nature is superior to the art of the beauty of it. I think we can capture or steal a moment of that beauty in a photograph and transform it into an artistic work, but reserving its initial authorship for Gaia.
The magic of photographing, as Jeanloup Sieff said, “is capturing a moment that will never be the same again,” and Nature with its constantly moving forms, its evolving light from dawn to dusk, is undoubtedly total art.
Susan Sontag said that “photography is a way of looking,” and she was right because when you press the shutter of your camera, you capture a moment of what you are looking at. I’ve always been fortunate because I believe I have that way of looking that Sontag referred to. A very curious gaze that has allowed me to see what usually goes unnoticed, a gaze that can make the ordinary something unique and differential.
As the great master Ansel Adams said, “Photography is not a visual accident or coincidence; it is a concept, it is knowing where and how to look.”