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When Faith Is Gone
Few social habits rely more heavily on the embodiment of symbols to convey a message than religion —or religious beliefs. It doesn’t matter what faith one believes in, or if one believes in a faith at all. The power of the embodied gods —whether in their appearance or in abstract forms— elicits a reaction that doesn’t come from the prefrontal cortex. Indeed, projecting personal feelings or worldviews onto an object is not peculiar to religion. However, there is a substantial difference between worshipping a branded car or the uniform of a football club and a symbol that reminds us of the inevitability of our final journey. In fact, Italy is…
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Toxic Waste in Open Air
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Too Big To Be Dumped
This frame came to life walking past an alley where time seems to have hit pause. The bins stand in perfect alignment, regimented like bureaucratic soldiers, while behind them, the decaying wall tells a different story—chaotic, layered, unresolved. I shot this with a 35mm prime, letting the midday sun carve stark shadows that add to the irony of this supposed order. The exposure demanded precision. Too much light and I’d have lost the texture on the old plaster; too little and the bins would sink into murk. I leaned into the contrast, embracing the Leica’s natural tonal harshness in black and white. No dramatic angles, no “decisive moment” flourish—just frontal,…
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Vive La France, The Oslo’s Way
Occasionally, photography rewards us with moments where irony, design, and national symbolism collide in a way that demands to be captured. Vive La France, The Oslo’s Way is one such moment. Here, three public toilets stand in perfect alignment, painted in the tricolour of the French flag—blue, white, and red—each proudly labelled with one of the national motto’s words: liberté, égalité, fraternité. From a compositional standpoint, the image works because of its symmetry and spacing. The photographer has placed the trio dead centre in the frame, allowing the architectural rhythm of the background—trees and modernist façades—to act as a neutral backdrop. The careful alignment ensures that each structure has breathing…
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Caged?
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Cupido’s Fall
There was a time when Cupido ruled the world. Not the cherubic archer of myth, but the man on the torn poster — a champion accordionist, his name blazing in dotted capitals, promising music and spectacle. Now, the paper curls at the edges, bleached and scarred by weather, the glory half-erased by time and graffiti. The god of love meets the fate of every earthly name: reduced to a fading print on a damp wall, fighting a losing battle against rust, mould, and the next layer of urban scribble. The photograph works because it understands the poetry of decay. The black-and-white treatment is an apt choice — stripping the scene…
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Two Beers, One Cigarette
Not staged. Swear to God!
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The Arson
The wind had carried the scent long before I arrived—burnt resin, iron oxide, the telltale acridity of ash cooling under morning sun. What was once structure and story was now a cinder pile, framed awkwardly by two still-standing beams like broken arms. I didn’t need to ask what happened. I just raised the camera. This photograph leans into disorder. The eye stumbles across charred planks, twisted metal, and a scorched panel half-folded in retreat. It’s not elegant, and I didn’t want it to be. The strength of the frame lies in its refusal to sanitise. Destruction is inherently chaotic; presenting it neatly would be a betrayal of what it is.…
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What Lasts of a Saturday Night Party
Another week-end is gone. Ordinary life gets kicking-in back. A cigarette butt, a crumpled flyer announcing a Saturday night out, and the cold geometry of rusted iron bars were all that remained. The contrast between the fleeting promise of fun and the permanence of decay was unavoidable. From a compositional standpoint, the shot relies heavily on framing. The bars of the grate, corroded and heavy with age, create a literal barrier between viewer and subject. They cut across the image in thick lines, forcing the eye downward into the scene. The detritus beneath—the soaked paper, the stub, the fragments of broken glass—becomes both imprisoned and revealed. Depth is enhanced by…
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Lost Cigarettes at Piazza Affari
The Milan Stock-Exchange is just closed, another stressful day is gone, so are the cigarettes. The Milan Stock Exchange has just closed. Another day of trading — of numbers, speculation, tension, and relief — is over. The square begins to exhale. The crowds thin, footsteps fade, and the traces of human presence remain in small, almost invisible ways. Here, in a shallow puddle on the cobblestones of Piazza Affari, the day’s residue is quietly recorded: cigarette butts, scraps, and the inverted grandeur of a neoclassical façade. I was drawn to the way the water held both the building’s form and the detritus of the day in a single frame. The reflection, sharp…
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An urgent phone call?
Using a tele (200 mm) allowed me to take the picture but the long focal didn’t separate the planes as a 50 mm would. Truth is that – in these condition – I would hardly have been close enough to obtain the visual effect I was looking for, but the alternative was not to take the shot at all.
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When the Rubbish Basket is full…
I made this photograph with the lens barely above the surface. The irony hit me only later: a crumpled, rusting bin—designed to contain waste—floating free, stripped of purpose, drifting like a rejected artefact in a river that had no interest in borders or rules. This wasn’t a chase-the-light moment. It was more of a document-what’s-happening moment. But even in documentary photography, composition matters. The crumpled bin sits dead-centre, emerging from the water like a reluctant symbol. The surrounding wash of grey-brown is indistinct by design—an oppressive field of repetition, without texture or detail, forcing the viewer back to that sodden, disfigured centre. Technically, I shot this with a long lens…
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The Straycat
Alterness becomes second nature, for those who live on the streets.
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Wrecked Ship
There’s a heaviness to this photograph, not just in the physical mass of the vessel but in the sense of time etched into its surface. The frame is filled almost entirely by the side of the wreck, the wood weathered to grey and streaked with rust-red, algae-green, and salt-white. The colours are muted but carry a richness born of decay — pigments laid down not by brush but by years of exposure, water, and neglect. From a compositional standpoint, the choice to exclude the horizon and most of the surrounding context forces the viewer to confront the ship as an object, almost abstract in its texture. The eye moves along…
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Forgotten
If you don’t want to bring fresh flowers, at least remove the old ones…
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Garbage Collection
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What lasts after a party…
Shot the morning after a wet December night, this scene is an unfiltered inventory of what remains once the bodies disperse. Three bottles—two upright, one half-tucked behind an iron gate—stand in for the absent crowd. There’s no music left, no voices, no movement. Just rust, grime, and the fragile persistence of glass. I framed the shot to keep the human presence implied but never visible. The steps lead nowhere, the iron gate is firmly shut, and the graffiti—hastily sprayed in orange—reads only “KR”, ambiguous and unresolved. That felt important. The story here is incomplete by design. It invites conjecture, not clarity. Technically, this is a study in texture. The marble…
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A lighter
…left for somebody to come, or hidden by someone who just left?
