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The Solitude of Power
In this staged tableau, a single white king stands isolated at the centre of a chessboard, surrounded by a dense perimeter of pawns, bishops, rooks, and knights—black and white alike. The visual symmetry is precise, the tension deliberate. It is a composition that speaks of power, but also of its limits. The king is both the most important and the weakest piece on the board. Its capture ends the game, yet it is immobile without protection. The title, The King’s Solitude, plays on this paradox: the sovereign stands alone, sovereign yet vulnerable, elevated yet exposed. In the context of international relations, this image evokes the precarious nature of leadership on the…
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Das Feuerwehr
Stark light and harsh shadow are unforgiving companions. I leaned into both for this frame, shooting handheld at night on cobblestone soaked in sodium glow. The word FEUERWEHR — fire brigade — is scrawled vertically in bold white across the pavement, its urgency subdued by silence and stone. I chose to skew the perspective intentionally, aligning the top-right vanishing point with the guardrail and letting the painted letters lead the eye back into the void. There’s no subject in the conventional sense — no figure, no action. Just trace elements of human systems and warnings against an absence. Technically, this is an image pulled from constraint. Low light meant pushing…
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A Couple of Windows
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Not A Rorschach Inkblot
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Missed Airplane
I made this photograph on a foggy morning at the airport, when the air was so thick with mist that the horizon vanished entirely. The two stair trucks stood idle, angled towards each other as if in conversation, yet the absence of the plane they were meant to serve transformed the scene into something more ambiguous. What should have been a moment of transit became one of suspension. The composition leans heavily on geometry. The crosswalk in the foreground pulls the viewer in, its bold stripes leading the eye towards the vehicles in the middle distance. Beyond them, the frame dissolves into white haze, stripping the background of any detail.…
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Renovating Milan
Milan, November 2017. A construction site—not the kind that demands attention, but the quiet kind that hides behind fabric and scaffolding. I took this photo walking past it for the third or fourth time. What stopped me wasn’t the building itself, but its ghost. Behind the mesh screen, the silhouette of the old façade still lingered, like a memory bleeding through fabric. Chimneys, outlines, the suggestion of windows. The city behind the curtain. At the bottom, the standard construction notice: printed bureaucracy stapled to metal, a reminder that change is always sanctioned, scheduled, structured. But the rest of the image resists clarity. Straight lines waver, verticals drift. Even the fence…
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The Flying Dutchman… a sort of
I made this shot standing at the edge of a small harbour after midnight, the kind of hour where everything becomes abstract unless it’s lit. The boat, isolated and slightly listing, sat in complete stillness, half-moored, half-abandoned. It wasn’t moving, but it didn’t feel settled either. That in-betweenness is what caught my attention. The frame leaned heavily on underexposure—on purpose. I wanted the boat to emerge from the blackness like a memory, not an object. I metered for the faintest highlights and let the rest fall into noise and void. What the image lacks in tonal range, it gains in atmosphere. The blacks are thick, the shadows granular, and the…
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Ashtray
The scene was quiet, almost too still for such a monumental location. From the balcony of the Court of Cassation, Rome’s ornate facade stretched before me, its stonework carved with faces that have watched over decades of political and judicial tides. And yet, in the foreground, resting on a cracked, timeworn surface, sat a simple glass ashtray. The juxtaposition was almost absurd—this object of everyday habit placed against the backdrop of one of Italy’s most imposing institutions. Framing the shot, I wanted to preserve that contrast. The ashtray dominates the foreground, crisp in focus, while the grand entrance behind it softens into blur. This use of shallow depth of field…
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The Choir Master
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Interplay
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A Focused (or Sad) Violinist
There are moments in photography when ambiguity becomes its greatest strength. A Focused (or Sad) Violinist captures one of those moments—a fleeting expression caught between concentration and melancholy, leaving the viewer unsure which emotion truly takes precedence. The composition is deliberately layered, with the foreground figure—out of focus—providing a soft frame for the central subject. This technique draws the eye directly to the violinist, whose gaze is fixed slightly to the side, lost either in the music or in a private thought. The choice to work with a shallow depth of field accentuates her presence while allowing the surrounding players to dissolve into a gentle blur, reinforcing the sense of…
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A Pensive Nun
I took this photo during a quiet moment in a Roman church. I wasn’t looking for drama. I wasn’t even looking for a nun. I was watching light — soft, diffused, the kind that reveals more than it conceals. Then she shifted her weight, her arm fell to the bench, and the composition drew itself. The image balances solitude and collective presence. She sits in isolation, yet she’s surrounded. Everyone in that frame is turned inward — praying, grieving, thinking, hiding. It’s an ensemble of introspection, and she anchors it without knowing. I shot this on film. Ilford HP5 pushed to 1600. The grain works with the silence; it has…
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Three Shadows
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The Sorcerer’s Shop
Walking past the narrow streets that night, I was struck by the oddly theatrical composition this small shop presented. “La Bottega delle Streghe” — The Sorcerer’s Shop — proclaimed the sign above, and there in the doorway hung a single jacket, swaying faintly in the evening air. Through the open door, the frame split into two narratives: the interior, softly lit and cluttered with fabric and objects; and beyond it, the alleyway, dimly illuminated, with a car just visible in the background. The framing here is deliberate — the doorway acts as both literal and visual threshold. The viewer is pulled in, suspended between the world outside and whatever spells…
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Even
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Frames for Sale at Via Margutta
I was walking along Via Margutta when the geometry in this shop window stopped me cold. Two empty frames leaned against the glass, one upright, the other tilted sharply as though it had slipped out of formation. Behind them, more frames receded into the dim interior, creating an optical echo — rectangles within rectangles, stretching away into the dark. I shot it in black and white film, embracing the grain and high contrast that the low light demanded. The texture is almost intrusive, but it adds a grit that feels appropriate for a street scene late in the evening. Exposure was tricky: I wanted to preserve the fluorescent highlights inside…
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Hard Stare
Shot this on a sun-scorched afternoon with harsh overhead light slicing the scene into contrast-heavy planes. The man in the checkered blazer didn’t slow his stride, didn’t shift his glare. He simply walked straight into frame, embodying the kind of presence that turns candid street into psychological confrontation. The choice of film stock—contrasty and slightly expired—helped strip the scene down to its tension lines. Midtones were sacrificed in favour of stark lights and choked shadows, a deliberate trade-off to drive mood over neutrality. The image is overexposed in the background, the whites blooming around the tourist group like a visual buffer, pushing them back and letting him advance. Compositionally, I…
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What Could I Do?
Don’t be afraid to do a mistake, but fear its consequences… 失敗を恐れていません でも 結果を恐れて
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As Deep As The Ocean
Shot on high-speed film, probably pushed too far for its own good, this image leans unapologetically into its grain. That’s not a romantic defence—it’s noisy, and there’s no hiding it. But the grit serves the subject well. This isn’t a fashion shot, despite what the woman’s posture might suggest at first glance. It’s a street portrait in conflict, a moment of clashing worlds on a Roman piazza. She walks absorbed in her bag—her hands, her head, everything drawn into that black void hanging at her side. And then, almost dismissed by distance and shade, the three men sit slouched on the steps, in hi-vis trousers, watching. They’re not interacting, not…
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Gigi Cifarelli Guitar Solo (feat. Michele Di Toro) – Live@Florian Espace Pescara
This the reportage I did on behalf of Rockol.it with a Canon 5d Mk III and the venerable Canon EF 70-200/2,8. These frames came from a night where the light was scarce but the music was abundant. I knew from the start that I would have to work with the available stage lighting, which meant pushing the ISO well beyond my comfort zone. The result is a grain structure that feels almost filmic — not something I tried to hide, but rather embraced, as it adds texture that suits the intimacy of live jazz. The composition developed naturally: Gigi Cifarelli to the right, fully immersed in his guitar, and the…
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Portrait of a Law Professor (and Free Climber…)
Some portraits speak as much through their surroundings as through the subject’s face. This image—shot on T-Max 400—was conceived to be less about formality and more about quiet juxtapositions. The professor, sharply dressed in a waistcoat and tie, sits in an office that is anything but stiff: behind him, a large photograph of a free climber grips the rock face with raw, physical intensity. The contrast is the story. The academic’s world is one of precision, argument, and interpretation of law; the climber’s, one of risk, strength, and moment-to-moment survival. And yet, the connection between the two is more than decorative. This professor is himself a climber—an individual who understands…
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Portrait of a Gunsmith
No bravado. No noise. Just focus. This is not a scene from a film. It’s a portrait of a gunsmith — hands steady, brow drawn in close. The room is small, functional, the shelves stacked. There’s no display of violence here. No suggestion of power. Only the patient act of tuning metal into balance. He’s wearing gloves, not out of fear, but out of respect — for the tool, for the work, for the ritual. The gun isn’t loaded. It isn’t posed. It’s an object in process. A mechanism being read, understood, maintained. I took this photo in near silence. The only sound was the faint click of a slide…
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An Old Boxing Gym
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Last Puff Before the Ride
