Photos of photos

Principles governing the Reframing series and the Gondoliers paintings (Gondoliers 1 and Gondoliers 2) are also valid for my Photos. Let me return to this matter. The whole notion is one: we do not have any more direct access to the reality. Our world is crowded with images and symbols and is impossible to get our way out of this. My solution to this barrier is the awareness of it, to make it clear and visible always, to show that an image is not a window to the world, but an image of an image of the world. My photos are exactly this, photos of photos. I take a shot, I manage it in different ways, in other words, I take distance from the subject and I work on the image (the photo in this case) and eventually I take another shot of it. The final shot acts as a mirror.

In the Reframing series, the paintings depict a photo or a painting or the figure holding an inner frame, making visible the image inside another image, the box in the box. Here the first image is reworked and transformed to get the final result.

Male Nude.

All these photos depict nude men, there’s perhaps the naïve idea that when naked we are more ourselves, that our naked body exposes our souls. I cannot say it’s true, but of course, there is something intimate and a hidden part of the model, and of the artist as well, is revealed during the photo session. It does not happen always but sometimes it happens. A photo session is not a neutral event, model –artist relationship is a creative moment where both the parts give something of themselves. And it works because once again they are like in a mirror.

Distance and proximity

The coexistence of the opposites has always been a guideline for my artworks. In this case, the forces at work are distance and proximity. How to get deeper inside another human being taking some distance, how to see better the entire going closer and closer. My teacher of painting always said: use the big brush for the little details and the small brush for the big spaces. And I could go further and explain that when you use the big brush for little details you are forced to catch the atmosphere, the essence, when you use the little brush for big spaces you bring it to life, making visible how every single dots contributes to enriching the whole. But we were talking about distance and proximity. Let me say something more about it. When you paint, you constantly get closer to the canvas and get away, it’s a kind of dance. It’s a practice that can teach a lot in a wider perspective, there’s an inner wisdom in it.

A painter loaned to the Photography.

Even when I take photos I’m still a painter, not in the meaning that my shots are pictorial. I’m always a painter that photographs because my whole approach to this technique is based on the wisdom of the painter. Painting is an art of life. I know I was talking about Photography and I’ve finished talking once again about Painting.