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Room 17 – VIXI
The steel doors of Aula 17 stand closed, expressionless. Matte black, scratched, impassive. Above them, a bureaucratic sign: 7ᵃ Sezione, Edificio B. On the right, a board once meant to list names and hearings is now empty—washed clean by time or intention. Seventeen is an unlucky number in Italy. Rearranged, the Roman numerals XVII form VIXI—”I have lived”, an epitaph. And so, Room 17 becomes more than a courtroom. It becomes a threshold. A place where the living confront endings. The end of freedom. The end of illusions. Sometimes, the end of justice itself. The symmetry of the composition tightens the tension. Every element is locked in place. Nothing moves, and nothing is random.…
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Legal Apartheid
Two elevators, side by side, divided not by function but by status. On the left, a small sign reads Pubblico. On the right, Avvocati. Between them, a strip of blank wall holds the call buttons and a standard notice: Non usare in caso di incendio. The symmetry is perfect, the contrast sharper for it. In the Court of Rome, this arrangement makes practical sense. Lawyers must move quickly between hearings; delays can derail the fragile timetable of justice. Efficiency demands a separate lift. And yet, looking at it here—reduced to a flat, black-and-white composition—the logic fades, and something else emerges. The brushed steel doors are marked with smudges and fingerprints, traces of the…
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YANE – Yet Another Nepal Exhibit
This the poster of Yet Another Nepal Exhibit. It is hard to see the point in going to the other end of the world to take pictures that, as a Google Image Search shows, have already been shot zillions of time. In other words: taking original photos in Nepal is very hard. This teach a simple lesson: going overseas in the belief that the place makes the photo is wrong.
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The Street Photographer Dilemma: Film or Digital
To me Street-Photography is digital. I missed this shot because I wasn’t able to properly focus my full-manual kit, as I would have do with an average digital camera. There is no point in wasting film in an highly fault-rate activity such as Street Photography.
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Milan
There are street scenes that announce themselves loudly, and then there are those that slip into your view almost without you noticing—until the details start to unfold. This was the latter. I was standing at the corner of Via Francesco Sforza when the alignment of people, traffic, and light presented itself in a way that felt quintessentially Milanese. The group waiting at the crossing tells a quiet story of the city: a man lost in his phone, another holding a leather briefcase, a woman dressed sharply but practically, and a cyclist easing forward, impatient to move on. Behind them, the ECOBus—route 73 to San Babila—anchors the scene firmly in the…
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From Camera to Print…
This is what happens when a shot is not taken thinking of its final destination (or when a graphic editor doesn’t consider what the outcome would be once printed): a poor rendition.
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Dress Different
According to the fashion-photography standards this is a perfectly usable shot. To me, that’s simply a missed photo.
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Horizontal
I was walking past this building when I noticed how the afternoon light chiselled into the façade, pulling out volume from what is, in essence, a flat geometric rhythm. The composition demanded no embellishment — the image resolved itself into horizontal bands almost on its own. I didn’t crop for symmetry; I simply took the time to level the camera and wait for the shadows to deepen just enough to add a graphic weight. What you see is pure form. No context, no clutter — just tone, line and light. It’s often said that black and white photography strips away distraction, but in truth, it doesn’t simplify. It sharpens. Here,…
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Rectangles
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The Sharp Shooter
Midday light in snowy terrain is rarely a gift—high contrast, flat textures, blown highlights. Yet it matched the tone of this frame. The intensity of the shooter’s expression, the harsh sunlight, the targets standing in silent defiance—all fed into a sense of clarity and control. He isn’t performing. He’s working, and the cold has no bearing on his focus. The image demanded precision. Exposure had to be managed tightly to avoid losing detail in the whites without choking the blacks of the tactical jacket. I metered for the shadows and pulled slightly in post. The result is contrasty, yes, but not artificially so. The white balance swings cool despite the…
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A Lonely Table
I took this photograph through a glass window — not by oversight, but with full intention. The resulting layers were unpredictable, and that was the point. The sea outside, the perfectly set table inside, and the accidental human form reflected between them, all merged into a single ambiguous frame. At first glance, it’s just another seaside restaurant, waiting for guests. But spend a little time and the structure begins to unravel. The light played into my hands: late afternoon, strong enough to shape the objects on the table, yet soft enough to allow the reflections to register without dominating. The glass acted both as barrier and canvas. What you’re looking…
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A Casual Walk
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The True Ironman
Not in a cave. Not in a suit. No arc reactor. Just grit, weight, and heat. This is a portrait of a welder—not fictional, not cinematic, but real. And yet, standing behind the mask, lit by the fierce white arc of molten metal, it’s hard not to think of Iron Man. Not the one flying through CGI skies, but the original scene: sparks, shadows, invention by necessity. But this isn’t fantasy. This is work. The man in the photo is sculpting structure with his hands, joining steel under blinding light. Every gesture is deliberate. Every spark, a fragment of labour. The mask doesn’t make him a superhero. It protects him—barely—from…
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Stripes of Light and Decay
Shot just after sunset, this image pivots on contrast—between elevation and erosion, movement and stillness, designed flow and neglect. The high-speed overpass above, lit with sodium arcs, forms an uninterrupted stream of engineered repetition. Below, the descending ramp is paved with crooked bricks, softened by moss and time, sloping into a dim alley where parked cars and old plaster tell a slower story. I waited for the last of the ambient light to thin out before releasing the shutter. The idea was to balance the residual blue of the sky with the warmer artificial tones bleeding off the lamps and roadways. Technically, it’s not pristine. There’s a softness in the…
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Out-of-Focus Once Again
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Last Wing Down
On an empty stretch of beach, a solitary sculpture rises against the horizon. It is the shape of a wing, its skeletal frame curved into an abstract S, crowned with a weathered propeller. It whispers of endings: of aircraft grounded forever, of journeys cut short, of stories that no one remained to tell. The black-and-white tones of the image deepen the sense of time suspended. Without colour, the scene feels like a fragment from the past, a memory caught in the salt air. Waves curl and break in the distance, indifferent to the monument on the sand. The tide comes and goes, as it has long before the flight this…
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Run Like Hell, Pinocchio!
The Pinocchio figure appears suspended in an awkward, unresolved gesture. His arms are open, his body twisted, as if caught between obedience and escape. Around him, other small figures barely surface from the darkness, their forms eroded by shadow and grain. The architectural background—arched, dense, almost geological—anchors the scene in a space that feels historical and civic rather than domestic or playful.
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What Lasts of A Workbench
Shot on 35mm film, this frame shows what remains of a once-active workspace—dust settled, air hoses tangled, the table cluttered in quiet disarray. I was drawn to the repetition of the coiled tubing, which leads the eye through the composition like a question mark—where did the work go? Technically, the image leans heavily on contrast. The film’s grain structure reinforces the tactile feel of the setting: the rusted corrugated metal, the splintered table legs, the pitted concrete. Exposure runs slightly hot in the highlights, but it works here. The wall texture and tool remnants need that brightness to emerge from the shadows. Compositionally, the corner perspective introduces depth without dramatics.…
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Phone Call – 2
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Just A Phone Call – 1
Shot in stark monochrome, this image emerged from a walk beneath an underpass on a winter afternoon. The subject is unassuming—a lone figure, caught mid-step, carrying bags in one hand and a phone to his ear with the other. But it’s the tension between light and shadow, confinement and openness, that makes the frame speak louder than the moment it documents. Technically, this is a study in contrast. The tunnel acts like a natural vignette, swallowing the foreground in near-black shadow while casting the background in a flat, wintery glare. This duality pushes the eye forward. The silhouetted figure is placed just past the threshold of light, where the architectural…
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Inside an Old Gym
There’s a quiet dignity to this corner of a forgotten gym — the kind of place that smells faintly of chalk, iron, and decades of sweat baked into the walls. The dumbbells, spherical and capped with worn white bands, sit on their metal stand like relics from another era. Behind them, weight plates lean casually against peeling plaster, the faded “S.I.R.E.A. Roma” inscriptions a reminder that these tools once carried prestige in the hands of athletes who are now long gone. The composition makes excellent use of the tight corner. By framing the equipment against two converging walls, the photographer forces the viewer’s gaze into the scene, trapping it in…
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Merleria Livia
Some signs don’t light up the street—they anchor it. This one simply says “MERLERIA LIVIA,” glowing white against the black. Not neon, not flashy. Just enough light to find your way back to something ordinary. Useful. Forgotten. Shot on a rainy night, the kind that turns every surface into a mirror. The pavement reflects the streetlamps like a memory trying to stay present. A man walks slowly, slightly hunched—not from age, maybe just the weather. Hands in pockets, coat zipped. Nothing urgent, nothing staged. The shop is closed. You can feel it. The shutters are down, but the sign is still doing its job. Reminding anyone passing that once, not…
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Between Sea and Sky
This frame was taken from the window of a descending flight—a rare moment when clouds, coastline, and light lined up like a deliberate composition. What I saw wasn’t dramatic, just elemental: water, air, light. That was enough. I chose monochrome not for effect, but for clarity. In colour, the image lost its cohesion—too many tonal distractions in the blue ranges, too much softness in the sea. Stripping it to black and white revealed a quiet structure beneath the atmosphere: horizontal bands of texture, density, and reflection. Technically, the image stretches the limits of what you can get through a scratched plane window and turbulent light. The glass wasn’t clean, the…
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John De Leo’s Grande Abarasse Orchestra – Live
This is a reportage I did during a concert of the John De Leo’s Grande Abarasse Orchestra. Covering this performance reminded me why live concert photography is such a balancing act between observation and anticipation. Each of these images, though part of a single reportage, serves as a fragment of a larger narrative – one built on rhythm, tension, and fleeting expressions. The colour frame of the full band provides essential context, grounding the viewer in the environment. The arrangement on stage is clear, with good use of depth to layer the musicians. The lighting, though moody and uneven, is handled competently, preserving detail without blowing the highlights from the stage…
