The Street Photography that I experience
Street photography represents my intent as an artist. This is what I do every day and without direct remuneration. It can be said that I respond to a need, an inner drive that leads me to find myself in the street with a camera, approaching people.
A photograph doesn’t exist without the photographer. And the photographer generates an image that is a direct expression of his way of seeing and therefore of being in the world. The photographer, every photographer, in taking a picture certifies his existence.
The images we produce are unique as a testimony of this existence and this perception of the world and of being in the world. In the moment in which we see a scene and in an instant we raise the photomera, we bring it to the face and we shoot we are carrying out an undemocratic act of offering a limit to the size in front of us. That limit is given by the four sides in which we enclose what we have chosen. In leaving out the rest, there is an absolutely personal choice. Photography is a form that expresses individualism at the moment we make it.
The choice of what to photograph and how to photograph it is determined by a series of coefficients.
From an ontological point of view this is something that interests me. I am a photographer: how I do it is determined by life experience, but also by the state of mind at the moment I shoot. There are photos that I take without thinking. I'm about to take more photos and then I don't take them. Why that? What happened at that moment? Why I ignore certain scenes and am attracted to others?
There are scenes that in my eyes as a street photographer I cannot fail to photograph.
In observing and photographing humanity, I recognize an immense value to photography. Maybe I don't save the world, but I save myself. Because taking pictures leads me to understand myself, others, the world around me more. Street photography has not improved the world but I am convinced that it can improve those who do it.
What is beauty? Something truly universal or, rather, what based on our experience and cultural background we recognize as such?
Sometimes I am struck by how light lands on people and objects. Shadows that exclude certain details or barely let you glimpse them they can impose themselves inside a photograph and add content. Because the content for me in a photo is not only in a story but in an atmosphere that is suggested.
If there is an extraordinary light as a photographer I will be interested in making it evident. Here the choices of exposure become an author's signature.
How to capture those shades of the absurd is up to me as a photographer.
It will be being in the place, but it will also be choosing the position with respect to the subject and what we want to emphasize. It will be that mental smile that leads you to snap. It could be that baby look that gets you excited when you are about to shoot and makes you euphoric when you feel like you have the photo you wanted.
But the satisfaction is little if it didn't go along with my vision.
I am interested in pursuing something that satisfies my interest. Here, then, is that certain way of photographing only pursues what gratifies me and stimulates me, without having to report to someone.
The Street Photography that I experience is what makes me happy. At the same time, I use it as an art form. But my art. Without having anything to expect from anyone. I don't do it to be in a gallery but it happened to exhibit in different places of art. If it happens of course I'm happy. If someone manages to experience my photographs in a positive way, that's a good thing. But my sensitivity and my photographic interest will not be fueled by what is most successful with those who observe from outside.
What I do is a reaction to a stimulus. It happens in a deeply internal process.
