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Evolution of a Guitar Player
It’s strange how a decade can pass in the blink of an eye — and yet carry with it the weight of evolution. The last time I met Roberto Di Virgilio, he had a Steinberger in his hands: all sharp edges, carbon fibre, and the aura of the 1980s futurism that guitarists either loved or dismissed outright. Seeing him now, a Les Paul slung across his shoulder, feels almost like a chapter shift in a novel I didn’t realise I was still reading. The photograph was taken in the kind of setting that usually conspires against the photographer: a stage during setup, flat midday light filtered through the structure above,…
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The Calm Newsreader
Piazza del Duomo is never truly still. The stone expanse acts as both stage and thoroughfare, where the pace of life is measured in contrasts. In this pair of images, that tension is laid bare: a young woman, mid-stride, the blur of her step almost audible, shares the same visual field as a man in a red shirt who sits in unhurried contemplation, newspaper in hand. The composition in the first frame benefits from the deliberate use of foreground and background separation. The woman is caught in that decisive moment—foot lifted, eyes focused ahead—while the man remains anchored in his position, reading. The interplay between their postures tells a story…
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A Lost Towel
No one around. Just sun, sand, and something left behind. The beach was empty when I passed through—early or late, hard to say—but this towel was there, alone, crumpled and vivid. Its colours refused to blend in: yellows, reds, a printed image of something once meaningful, now half-folded by the wind. It didn’t look forgotten. It looked abandoned. What caught my eye more than the towel was what surrounded it: tyre marks, footprints, all criss-crossing paths layered into the sand. As if everyone passed by but no one stopped. It felt recent, but not urgent—like whoever left it didn’t mean to come back. The shot came together quickly. Low angle…
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The Smoke Teacher
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The Elders’ Council
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Urban Scavenger
I photographed this scene late at night, drawn by the way a single pool of light exposed the fragments of urban life that usually go unnoticed. The gull was feeding on scraps by the kerb, a plastic cup discarded nearby, while traffic and people passed outside the frame. What emerged was a study of survival in the margins of the city, where wildlife and waste collide under sodium lamps. Compositionally, the image hinges on that triangle of illumination falling across the pavement. The lit area acts almost like a stage, isolating the bird against the darker periphery. I placed the gull slightly off-centre, letting the curved kerb and the lines…
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A Quiet Evening
… in the heart of Rome, an old trattoria let people enjoy a quiet diner.
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The Sailor
Hey, there’s no water straight there!
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Trento, After Dark
There’s a plaque on the wall behind them—honouring soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fallen in a war a hundred years gone. But they’re not looking at that. Instead, three boys sit shoulder to shoulder on a wooden bench, huddled around a glowing Apple logo. A little too bright for the square. The light falls on their faces the way a fire once would have. They’re focused, not speaking much. Two watch the screen; one taps at his phone. Nobody’s in a rush. This is Trento at night: limestone façades, uneven cobbles, Mediterranean shrubs in planters, and now Wi-Fi in the air. The square is mostly empty. Just a few benches,…
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What lasts of a springtime hailstorm
The street was still echoing with the last low rumbles of thunder, and people had not yet come out of their doorways. The hailstones had gathered along the edge of the pavement, forming an accidental border where road meets kerb. They hadn’t yet begun to melt, and their translucency caught the ambient light in a way that made them seem brighter than the grey afternoon deserved. What interested me first was the contrast in scale and material—hard pellets of ice scattered among leaves that had been torn down in the wind. The leaves are not decorative; they are casualties of the weather, sudden and unplanned. Their colour breaks the monochrome…
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Alone, Together…
Are they friends, or do they just share the table?
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Rest under a tree
Resting under a tree, on a sunny afternoon, in springtime.
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Love is like a flower
Love is like a flower, Both need care and attention to grow, Both die if not fed, Both don’t last forever.
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The Hands of a Drummer (Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez)
You don’t photograph a legend. You try not to get in the way. This frame is all rhythm, no fanfare. No face, no spotlight—just hands, sticks, cymbals, and breath held between beats. It’s Horacio “El Negro” Hernández in concert, but not in the way the audience sees him. This is closer. Quieter. The private side of percussion. Shot just beneath the hi-hat, I framed the photo to let the hand speak: fingers curled not in tension, but in dialogue. The skin slightly worn, the grip half-visible—mid-phrase, mid-flow. The cymbals catch the stage light like the faintest of brushstrokes, shimmering but not stealing the scene. You can feel the groove here.…
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Waiting for a Future to Tell
Behind the slightly dusty glass of an old tobacco shop window, a box of tarot cards stands upright, holding its ground with a quiet dignity. The label reads taotl, the colours still vivid despite the years: red flames, green leaves, a central emblem that seems both protective and dangerous. Beneath, the name Masenghini anchors it in a very specific history of Italian card-making, a craft now mostly relegated to collectors and the nostalgic. Around it, other objects share the same slow fate: a light-blue school exercise book titled Quaderno, some patterned boxes, a rolled cylinder of bright turquoise paper. Everyday relics, all bathed in the soft, uneven light that only old glass and time…
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The Worst Moment to Fix a Shoe’s Problem
Caught on a descending escalator, mid-bend, mid-thought—this is the photograph of a decision made too late. Everything in this frame leans forward. The vanishing point pulls you down, hard, like gravity with intention. The blur on the metal steps mimics momentum. You can almost feel the hum of machinery and the silent urgency of descent. At the centre of it all: a man hunched over, trying to wrestle control over something small and unruly—perhaps a loose shoelace, perhaps something more symbolic. I didn’t plan this shot. It happened fast. A reflex. Shot handheld, low light, no time to think, just enough to feel. The imperfection—the motion blur, the noise, the…
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Sideways Through the Tunnel
This photograph was taken in the last leg of a trip to Rome, from inside my car while standing still because one of the many and usual traffic jam on the Tangenziale. I tried to have the road not to dominate the frame, fragmenting it, instead. A dark curve cuts through the image, separating two visual registers: the solid, static wall on the left and the receding tunnel of lights on the right. The image is less about travel than about perception while travelling. The motion blur and softness at the edges weren’t deliberate; they happened by chance. However, I like the result nonetheless. The photo would have felt dishonest…
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Hard Spam
Sometimes spam doesn’t hide in your inbox. It glows in a pharmacy window. Shot on a quiet evening walk, this storefront display in Rome—or somewhere very much like it—caught my attention with the subtlety of a neon bullhorn. A perfectly literal interpretation of hard advertising: Viagra, Levitra, Cialis. Bold red font, urgent discounts, official decree cited. Street-level pharma meets street-level comedy. The scene is absurdly human. Framed by a closed shutter and a lonely Gaviscon box, the paper sign is taped like a last-minute school notice, but the message is anything but shy. There’s no algorithm, no clickbait. Just unapologetic, front-facing capital letters offering a prescription-strength punchline. It’s spam—but analogue. No filters,…
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Waiting for the Justice to Arrive
In this hallway of the Tribunale Penale di Roma, time seems suspended. Lawyers sit or stand, briefcases at their feet, bundles of files in hand. Some engage in hushed conversation, others review notes with ritualistic precision. A woman in red draws the eye—a rare burst of colour in an otherwise subdued palette of solemnity. The title, Waiting for the Justice to Arrive, operates on two planes. On the surface, it is procedural. The court has not yet opened its doors; the judge is late, the hearing is postponed. These legal professionals must simply wait—idle, static, alert. Justice, here, is both person and principle: the judge must enter the courtroom for proceedings…
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Under the Yellow Umbrella
It had just stopped raining—just enough to make the pavement shine, but not enough to fold away the umbrellas. I took this photo in passing. No setup, no waiting. Just a quiet moment shared by two people walking slowly, pushing a shopping trolley and carrying a red bag, both tucked under a loud yellow Bardahl-branded umbrella. The kind of umbrella you don’t buy, but are given somewhere and end up using forever. There’s nothing dramatic here. No grand gesture. Just two people—maybe a couple, maybe not—navigating a wet day together. The colours caught me: the dull browns, the muted jackets, that flash of red, and of course the umbrella. It…
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Head-Dresser
A market stall at first glance, and yet, a surreal composition unfolds. Plastic mannequin heads rise from wooden sticks, lined up with aloof dignity, each adorned with scarves and hats meant to lure the hurried passer-by. They stare silently into space, held aloft like modern-day trophies, eerily anthropomorphic yet stubbornly artificial. The display isn’t just for commerce—it’s unintentional theatre. The pun in the title Head-dresser plays cleverly on the expected hairdresser. But instead of grooming the living, this stall ‘dresses’ the disembodied, the ornamental. These mannequins are not being styled—they are the style, repurposed vessels for fashion’s utilitarian need. And to the side, a woman walks past in winter garb, seemingly unaware of…
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Why on Earth people, in Italy, still eat junk food?
A cold night in an Italian piazza. The air carries the scent of roasted chestnuts, espresso, and wood smoke—but here, under the halo of fairy lights, the smell is unmistakably different. Oil. Sugar. Processed salt. A small crowd stands in front of a street cart, its bicycle frame weighed down with canisters, bags, and the faint hum of a generator. The vendor moves with practised speed, ladling batter, folding paper, handing over parcels of deep-fried comfort. The queue is patient, hands buried in pockets, eyes following the ritual as if it were part of the winter tradition. Beyond the cart, a carousel spins in soft blur, its music faint against…
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A Silent Dialogue
A restrained coastal tableau built around stillness and separation. The seated figure is placed slightly right of centre, turned away from the viewer, which shifts emphasis from identity to gesture and mood. The backpack anchors the narrative as travel or pause, while its bulk balances the composition against the open sand. The scene is organised in three calm bands—foreground ripples of sand, a mid-ground strip of beach, and the softly textured sea beyond. This horizontal structure stabilises the frame and amplifies the contemplative register. A lone pigeon, small but sharply legible, introduces a secondary point of attention and a faint counter-rhythm to the figure’s inward focus. Colour is deliberately subdued:…
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My camera’s early test shots
Pictures with no specific “intent”. Just went to the docks and clicked around, to get an early feel of how does the camera work. Results: mixed feelings.
