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Photography Does Not Exist (Until the Eye Makes It)
Foreword This post is the first of a series meant to organise in a logical and structured corpus the ideas collected in this blog throughout years of taking photos in various environments. Introduction A preliminary misunderstanding that should be addressed immediately is that a photography does not exist per se. The photograph begins only when the eye intervenes—when it selects, isolates, and organises a continuous visual field indifferent, in itself, to interpretation. This means that an image is not discovered but constructed, and this construction may even fail, as when a narrative is imposed that later proves to be incorrect. From the outset, therefore, photography must be understood as an…
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MARTian Stairs
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto —MART, in short— is a place that definitely worth a visit, should you be traveling across the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy. Its main facility, an architectural masterpiece in itself, is located in Rovereto, a small town about half an hour (by car) from Trento. Unlike many small, old Italian towns, which often only have one main attraction, such as a monument, castle or nobleman’s palace, Rovereto is different. The town itself is an attraction, as it was the place that Fortunato Depero — one of the giants of ‘Second Futurism’ — made its centre of gravity, by opening…
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A Knitting Shop in Rovereto
During a casual walk in Rovereto, a lovely town in the Trento province, I stumbled upon a knitting shop. The display was full of bags and other items for sale, only, it was not a just a shop, but an actual factory where a the craftman was working on his weaving loom. In an age where mass production is the norm, luxury is often equated with displaying a logo rather than enjoying a product’s quality, it is almost hypnotic to witness the transformation of raw materials into useful and attractive items through human ingenuity. So, after spending a few minutes observing how the individual threads were being woven into a…
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The Sorcereress
This is a photo taken from the reportage of an actors’ collective’s ‘opera prima’. This time, the venue was a smaller theatre than those I usually work in. This meant there was less room for movement and only a few limited angles from which to take the shots. As a result, I mainly framed shots from below stage level, with very little freedom to move laterally. This forced me to rely almost entirely on timing rather than geometry. I therefore tried to draw the viewer into an uneasy proximity with the figure. This enabled me to focus on capturing expressions to reveal the character’s psychology.
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Breaking Through
This is one of the photos I took while courtside at a women’s handball match between the Italian and Bosnian national teams. I was there as part of the sports photography seminar I run at the university where I also teach sports law. This is why I had to produce teaching materials using a number of pieces of equipment and techniques, ranging from prefocusing with full manual lenses to fast target acquisition and single shot.
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Professional Courtesy
Chasing news lies at the core of any journalist’s work. The professionals who walk the streets instead of enjoying the comfortable seats on talk shows, discussing ‘life, the universe and everything’ (cit. Douglas Adams), are like sharks with a sense of blood. They can smell news from a distance or are part of an ‘intelligence’ network that tells them what and where. Indeed, photojournalists experience a particular challenge: reclaiming a vantage point from which to take the shot. This necessity often ends up in being ‘assertive’ when entering a scene or ‘elbowing’ those nearby to make room. Sometimes, though, there is also a show of professional courtesy, like in this photo…
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Misfocused Photo’s Quick Fix with ChatGPT and Nano Banana
When on an assigment I often take with me a second camera with a vintage lens. This is a way to test old glasses along modern ones, without risking failure. Every now and then, therefore, I switch from the work gear to the personal one to give it a try. Sometimes I get good results, some other times I don’t, like in this shot taken during the 2026 Italian Skating Championship. As it is apparent, I misfocused the skater trying to get up, so the photo turned out as an egregious miss. As they say, however, I exploited the mistake to turn a problem into an opportunity. So I decided to…
