9 May 2023

I use to sleep until 9.30am, but yesterday I had a shooting at 8am at Fontana di Trevi to create a new artwork from my series Urban Melodies (for a beautiful family that asked me to be in one of the layers in the final image). I had the chance to discover once again my city under a different light, I went there with my bicycle and Roma was absolutely stunning under the early morning light, I didn’t remember how beautiful it could be with less tourists, less noise, less chaos. It was really nice, even if I was a zombie for the rest of the day! Here some street photos I took after the shooting.

25 April 2023

This is the most important and beautiful day of the year, to me. It’s the day when Italy celebrates the liberation from nazifascism, so you can guess how great this day is. Yesteday my neighborhood was full of flags, colors and people. I took some photos, of course and here is a selection. First of all, the 25th of April through my multiple exposures: “Liberation leading the People”.

Burning Out

There are days when I feel empty. Emptied of enthusiasm, of passion, of emotions. And sometimes I feel my relationship with photography changed, different, involved in a mere matter of work. I’m having a hard time getting out. In recent years I’ve heard a lot about burnout and it seemed to me a rather distant thing, of which I could not fully understand the facets. Now I understand it much better and there are moments where I feel overwhelmed, in fact I read that burnout can affect your mental, physical and emotional state. So I read something about the 5 stages of burnout and, according to this article, they are:

My First Street Photography Student

Yesterday I had my first Street Photography workshop in Rome and my first student. I prefer to work with just one student to dedicate two hours just to one person, also because one of the most important things in Street Photography is being invisible and groups of people could be less invisible and, also, accidentally photobomb other students pictures. So yesterday I walked for a couple of hours in the Historical Center of Rome, taking pictures, and explaining to my first student how to be a better street photographer. I talked about how to be a ninja, the importance of consider different points of view in the same scene, the difference of being “hunter” or “fisherman”, how to play with all the elements of the city, like monuments, statues and, most of all, how to capture fragments of daily life to tell our city.

This is a selection of images taken by my student. It was her first approach with Street Photography. Not bad, don’t you think?

Napoli, 25 March 2023

Last saturday I went to Napoli to eat a pizza (well, a couple, actually) and take some photos of the city, that is going to celebrate the third Scudetto of its football team. Napoli is one of the best city in Italy for Street Photography, its vibes and its carousel of characters is really something great. Here some photos I took during my walk.

14-15 March 2023

Two days ago, as I saw this guy smoking on a bench, I approached him without being noticed and I took some photos of his “fog”. I like to act as a ninja when I do street photography (first photo)! Yesterday I took a bus and there was a nice situation for street (third photo), then I was at that “yellow” corner and I thought that it was a good point to wait for the right person to walk in the frame. I was lucky because just a moment after arrived a guy with a balloon in the hand (last photo)!

This was my photoweeek, more or less. How was yours?

The Times They Are A-Changin’

I always think that one of the most important thing in photography, especially street photography, is to tell the times we are living for the future, in particular the life of the cities, that change day by day, so fast. For example, in March 2011 I was visiting New York City, walking everywhere and taking pictures. I remember when, on the 59th Street in Manhattan, I saw this man having a cigarette break outside an Italian restaurant, characterized by a beautiful and huge red wall. I loved that scene, the contrast between the red of the building and that white dressed man. It’s one of my favorite street photos I took in NYC.

So, this is how was that wall in 2011, this is the picture I’m talking about:

Vernissage

Thanks to Alessandro Passerini for this beautiful talk about art and photography and how hard can be working in Italy for an artist. The talk is an episode of his feature Vernissage on YouTube and unfortunately it’s only in Italian. In this video my thoughts, my story and the Top 5 of the photographers that most influenced my way of photograph:

18 February 2023

Saturday morning I was drinking a coffee in my apartment when I suddenly heard drums and whistles fill the silence. They came from the street, so I went to my window and I saw a parade, there was lot of people walking and dancing. So I dress with the first thing I found and I ran downstairs to take part of the parade and take some pictures too. It was the 14th edition of the Anti-racist Carnival of Garbatella, my neighborhood. It was really fun. Here a selection of images I took:

Photo Culture #15: Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz is one of the greatest photographer of all time. In this photo, taken in Paris in 1967, there is so much to tell, it’s for sure one of the greatest street photos ever taken. We are immediately catapulted in the Paris street, spectators of its daily life, surprised and unable to understand what just happened.

There is a man on the ground, maybe fallen, maybe fainted, and in Meyerowitz’s photo everybody is looking at him, like a centripetal force that capture the eyes (included ours). Everything is freezed in this amazing shot, a mistery that involves passers-by, a cyclist, workers, with a traffic jam in the background that recalls the crowd on the right side of the photo.

As Meyerowitz said: “A photograph allows such contradictions to exist in everyday life, more than that, it encourages them. Photography is about being exquisitely present”.