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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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Shade of Berlin
… Jeff, Berlin.
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Knocking on lion’s door
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Roman Break
The light was harsh that day in Piazza di Spagna, shadows cutting deep, reflections flaring off windshields and stone. I was walking without intent, Leica in hand, when I noticed these two men — coachmen, likely — parked in the shade of their own carriage, deep in conversation. Their posture was telling: relaxed, inward-facing, close without being performative. Whatever was being said wasn’t for anyone else. It was a moment of pause between tourists, an honest interruption in a day spent performing a role. The scene called for monochrome. Colour would have distracted from the shapes and lines — the interlocked limbs, the glint off the bridle, the folds in…
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Still Together
Still together, like the very first day. I saw them before they saw me — leaning slightly towards each other, their posture neither rigid nor slouched, but comfortably suspended in the shared gravity of the table between them. The wine glasses, half-filled with rosé, spoke of time already spent; the unopened bottle on the side suggested more still to come. From a compositional standpoint, I worked with the geometry of the setting — the square table, the vertical lines of the wall, and the quiet interruption of the stone column — to anchor the frame. The couple sit on opposite sides, yet the line of sight between them is unbroken,…
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The missing guest
This image unfolded quietly, almost too politely — three men in jackets and ties sitting at a table clearly set for four. The elegance of the setup, from the pressed tablecloth to the carefully arranged centrepiece, clashes subtly with the anticipation suspended in their posture. Nobody makes eye contact. One reads the menu, the others look downward, pretending focus. The empty chair becomes the central subject without needing to move. Framing was tight on purpose. I let the olive oil bottle in the foreground stand, blurring into obscurity and giving some depth and texture to an otherwise sharply focused core. That slight intrusion also reinforces the perspective: I wasn’t part…
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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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Photography and the dangers of ethics
Starting from my usual visit at Yanick Delacroix website, yanidel.net, and Eric Kim blog link after link, I’ve stumbled upon a post by Joerg Colberg discussing the always-hot topic of ethics vs law in (street-)photography. The usual way to handle this problem is by expressing it in terms of “freedom-of-expression-vs-personal-privacy” and by raising questions like “would you have shot this picture?”, “how do you feel photographing homelesses, bums and freaks?”, “Is this photo ethical?” and invariably concluding without giving a clear (though non necessary correct) answer. So, for what it worth, here are my two pence. To put it short, the Colberg (proposed) Doctrine says (verbatim quotation) it might be…
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Foto-Grafo admitted to the Persol Reflex Edition contest
This photo has been accepted for the Persol Reflex Edition contest. I usually don’t like to participate in this kind of initiatives, but the appeal of the possibility to win a Leica M-E was too compelling!
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Late-afternoon’s snack
…who knows what will be served for dinner?
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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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An Old-Style ATM
This frame came together in the blink of an eye — or perhaps more accurately, in the blur of one. No carefully plotted composition, no tripod, no second chance. Just a brief exchange at a café counter: a plate extended, a hand offering payment, the warmth of human transaction before contactless cards made it all vanish into invisible transfers. The motion blur here is both the flaw and the essence. Technically speaking, the shutter speed was far too slow for handheld shooting in this kind of lighting, resulting in softness across the entire image. If sharpness were the sole measure of photographic merit, this would be an immediate reject. But…
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No Tablet, No Problem
Airport Gate, Early Evening No screens. No earbuds. No glowing rectangles in sight. Just two people passing time with cards and conversation, waiting for a flight that’s probably delayed. The bench is metallic, cold. The lighting is flat. But between them, something human is happening—casual, quiet, and becoming increasingly rare. I didn’t stage this. I just noticed it. In a terminal where most people were curled into devices, these two were leaning forward, sharing space, actually looking at each other. He speaks, she listens. She gestures, he laughs. Their luggage is there, sure—but this moment isn’t about where they’re going. It’s about the pause before it. The photo isn’t sharp…
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Who is the mannequin?
… not sure.
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The Urban Chase
Not all of the urban chases, involve a couple of Alfa 159 trying to catch an Aston Martin. I shot low to the ground, framing the chase diagonally to emphasise tension. The perspective lines draw the viewer forward, while reflections and shadow gradients anchor the movement. Technically, exposure was demanding: harsh daylight, reflective surfaces, and metallic tones required a slight underexposure to preserve highlights. The result holds texture without burning whites. Compositionally, I favoured asymmetry. The cars don’t sit in comfort; they slice through balance. It’s a study in velocity disguised as stillness. If I could refine it, I’d add micro-contrast in the midtones for depth in asphalt and chrome.…
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So what?
There is a certain energy in candid street photography that cannot be replicated in a controlled setting, and So What?captures it in full stride. This frame offers a slice of urban life in the late afternoon, when the sun hangs low and the streets teem with a mix of idle chatter, cigarette breaks, and casual posturing. The photograph hinges on the central figure—a tall man in sunglasses, cigarette poised mid-gesture—whose slight tilt of the head and half-smirk seem to issue the titular challenge. To his left, another man, hand to face and gaze averted, projects an entirely different mood: contemplative, perhaps guarded. The third figure, seen only from behind, forms…
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A young Iron Maiden fan
He might never have seen them, but who cares? Metal is immortal…
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A stupid quarrell
This photo raised strong criticism in the mainstream media. A soldier deployed in an operational theater (war, in other words) wears a balaclava with the image of his all-day companion: the death. Apart the fact that the image is a skull and not the Death (whose iconography is fairly more articulated and complex) the question is: why should this photo matters? All the combatants, of all times, of all places in the world know best the value of inducing fear into the enemies’ minds by way of “icons” (armors, masks) and sounds (shouts, drums.) And, in parallel, every soldier must find his own way to handle the unbearable fear of…
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Thirthy years behind…
I took these two shots unbeknownst of the work of Luigi Ghirri and Mimmo Jodice. These photo cannot be at all compared with those from the two masters, nevertheless what amazed me is the similarity of the compositions between what I did and those of Ghirri and Jodice. It seems that I’m into a path already explored since some thirty years or so. Now the challenge is how long will it takes to evolve into a contemporary (and, possibly, original) style.
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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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When the day is gone
… there are plenty of ways to still make a newspaper useful.
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Forgotten Bike In A Forgotten House
I found the bike in a room whose doors had not been opened in years. Paint flaked from the plaster. Light slipped through a broken pane and laid a clean rectangle across the floor. The bike stood where someone once left it mid-errand, an everyday object promoted by neglect into relic. I built the frame around planes and diagonals. The window sits high and left to keep the eye moving across the shaft of light to the handlebars, then down the front wheel to the scuffed tiles. Floorboards and wall seams act as guides, converging behind the saddle to hold the gaze. I kept a little headroom above the bars…
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High-Tech Elder Care Tool
When I first saw this image, the irony of the title struck me. High-Tech Elder Care Tool—and yet, before us is a stark black-and-white photograph of a row of battered, utilitarian wheelchairs, one with “Geriatria” scrawled across its back. This is not the glossy, high-tech medical equipment we often see in promotional brochures, but the reality many encounter in underfunded wards and overstretched hospitals. From a compositional standpoint, the image benefits from its simplicity. The wheelchairs are positioned in a way that leads the viewer’s eye naturally from left to right. The empty, flat wall behind them offers no distraction, instead amplifying the focus on the subject matter. The angle,…
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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,…
