Emptiness in a frame

It’s definitely unavoidable for artists to pur much more of themselves than they intend to into their work. I’ve always admitted that what you can see in my photos is not the real world, but merely my take on it, the way I see it, which of course reflects my state of mind. Thus, I found it interesting to look at my own photos and try to deduce something about myself, in particular analyzing my non-portraiture pictures, those that simply show a place or object without focussing on a human subject.

Well, I noticed that my world appears to be totally empty, almost bleak and sad. I managed to shoot perfectly empty, lifeless photos even in such a lively and colourful city as Venice. This is something that shows even in my portraits – if you pay attention, you’ll se that beside the main subject there’s never anybody else, even when we shoot outdoors in such places as Milan’s city centre – but it became particularly noticeable in my latter shoots of such a popular touristic place as Venice. Okay, I shot smaller alleys rather than well known places (mainly because I find no point in shooting the Rialto bridge, Piazza San Marco, Canal Grande or other oh-so-seen-of landmarks) and I also had to wait for the right moment when there were no passers by, but it’s still hilarious to get such images in a city that’s widely known for tourism – let alone the association with the Carnival. That’s simply my style and I tend to get such images pretty much anywhere I go.

So, looking at my photos one might think deep down I’m a very lonely and melancholic person, that I avoid other people and so on. These last few monochromes in particular could look like the work of someone with manic-depressive tendencies.

The truth is, my photography simply reflects me being a total control freak. I need to be in control of anything that’s around me as much as I can and this becomes quite easy when I shape my own world through images. The crowd, random people interacting with a scenery and with one another, are absolutley unpredictable and uncontrollable, they totally escape my mental scheme, thus I do my best to cut them off my world. Emptiness, silence and stillness, they all mean the order and control I constantly struggle to get over my life rather than an attempt to isolate myself from the rest of the world.Paradoxically, I think my whole control issue is the first thing that got out of my hand, so I’m trying to work on that so that it won’t keep affecting other aspects of my life. To be honest, right now I’m not concerned about how it reflects in my photography though, as I really like it the way it is, without disturbing elements that spoil the aesthetic order of the image. I don’t really know how I’ll be growing artistically and personally, so this maight change in time, but regardless of that I find myself glad for what photography helps me achieve not only as an artist, but as a human being: express and learnt to know myself.