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Nagasaki Biker
Sometimes carrying a camera with a slow autofocus, slow shutter and low ISO can be a hindrance. Had I had a better camera and a faster film, this photo would have been much better.However, it is the eye that is to blame, not the old Nikon 35TI. I realised too late that what I was looking at could have been an image and had to react within a few seconds. In those conditions, the camera did what it could, but if I had been aware of my surroundings, I would have been ready at the right moment. So I paid the price for my bad habit of relying on gear…
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As Seen on Ferrania Film’ Stories section…
A selection of the pictures I took this year in Boston and Tokyo has been published on the official Film Ferrania website, in the ‘Stories’ section.
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On Photography and Self-Delusion
Only travelling abroad gets exotic photos. No need to travel overseas to get unusual images. Shoot digital is the only way ‘to stay in the moment’. Going retro with film is the only way to stay ‘in the moment’. Get the latest gear you can find. No, use the cheapest stuff because photography is about the man, not the machine. Do not post process, do post process. Shoot colour; no shoot B&W. Use Midformat, no full-frame, no APS-C, no smartphone-size sensors… The list of advice coming from (self-professed) experts, journalists (most often, web content editors with no editorial clearance), and ‘seasoned’ (wannabe) photographers could grow forever.More often than not, these…
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Raus
I took this photograph on a quiet street where the stillness of the scene clashed violently with the venom of the message sprayed across the wall. The phrase, written in crude, hurried strokes, is not a remnant from some distant, darker chapter of history but a fresh reminder that intolerance continues to thrive. The frame is stripped of distraction: a textured wall, a single small window with broken panes, and the shadow of a streetlamp reaching across the surface. The composition leans heavily on the tension between emptiness and statement. Placing the graffiti off-centre allows the cracked window to act as a counterweight, both visually and metaphorically—two forms of damage,…
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In the backstage
There’s a kind of quiet tension in the way they lean against the wall. No people in sight. No instruments visible. Just the outlines of music, sleeping inside their forms. As a photographer, that’s the kind of silence you try to listen to. The room was dark, lit only from one side. The light caught the curve of one case and slipped off the edge of the other. Texture came forward. Shape. Memory. You could almost hear the faint creak of clasps, the echo of strings long since gone quiet. Sometimes the most expressive shots come when nothing is happening. No performance, no sound—just the pause in between. These cases…
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A party that shall never come
A dress and a bag waiting to be sold. Will the party ever take place?
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Tables and Chairs, at Night
I was drawn to the repetition in this scene — a narrow path lined with tables and chairs, each set lit by a pool of light from the wall-mounted lamps. The rain had just stopped, and the wet stone reflected the glow, creating a subtle tonal contrast that runs like a silver ribbon through the composition. I chose to frame it at an angle that emphasises the recession into darkness, the line of tables pulling the viewer’s eye deeper into the image. The rhythm is regular but not mechanical; the slight variations in chair placement and the occasional break in symmetry prevent it from feeling sterile. The lamps provide natural…
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Fantozzi’s chairs
They look innocent enough — two soft, shapeless seats next to a rattan table, tucked under a wall in some coastal bar. But the title gives it away: Fracchia’s Chairs. And if you know the name, you know exactly what kind of scene this is. Giandomenico Fracchia, as played by Paolo Villaggio in the 1970s, was the tragicomic soul of bureaucratic Italy: servile, stammering, utterly at the mercy of authority. There’s a legendary sketch in which he’s being questioned by his boss — unable to sit still on a chair so round and formless it’s practically a trap. And here it is again, reimagined in polyurethane and branded with Nastro Azzurro. The…
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Big Brother Enhanced
Shot at Gardaland.
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Snaps of a Flamenco recital…
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Shade of Berlin
… Jeff, Berlin.
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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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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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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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The Long Way Up
I’ve always been drawn to stairways — not for their architectural elegance, but for what they suggest about human effort. This photograph, taken in a steep Italian hill town, is less about the stones and more about the person halfway up, leaning forward into the climb, each step a small battle against gravity and fatigue. From a compositional standpoint, I deliberately placed the vanishing point at the top of the stairs, where the light spills in from the open street beyond. The walls on either side act as vertical guides, forcing the viewer’s eye along the incline toward the lone figure. The choice of black and white wasn’t an afterthought;…
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Tough Enough
Winter light in Rome has a particular sharpness to it—crisp, but never cruel. I took this frame on one of those days when the air was cool enough to see your breath, yet the sun still carried the weight of the Mediterranean. The man in the foreground walked past with the easy stride of someone immune to the season. Sleeveless, tanned, a newspaper in hand—he looked more like August than January. The scene unfolded quickly. The scooter-lined curb, the idling bus, and the kiosk stacked high with papers gave the photograph its Roman DNA. The cluttered street corner made for a textured backdrop, but compositionally I placed him just off-centre,…
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Fireworks on Film
There is a different kind of alchemy at play when working with Kodak T-Max 400. Unlike Tri-X, with its pronounced, almost romantic grain structure, T-Max offers a modern, cleaner rendering — sharper edges, smoother tonal transitions, and a capacity for detail that rewards precision. This photograph, made during the fleeting moment of lighting a fuse, plays perfectly to the film’s strengths. The composition is minimal and deliberate: three vertical elements in a horizontal frame — two cylindrical fireworks flanking the central act — with a hand entering from the left. The eye is drawn instantly to the burst of sparks, frozen mid-flight, their delicate lines rendered with razor clarity. Against…
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Visual
This image is, in many ways, a study in simplicity—yet one that rewards a longer look. What appears at first as a mere grid of evenly spaced horizontal lines soon reveals itself as a layered surface, a play between the tangible and the abstract. The photograph offers no obvious focal point; instead, the viewer’s attention is pulled rhythmically from edge to edge, caught in the hypnotic repetition of the slats. I composed the shot to be almost perfectly symmetrical, letting the central vertical seam anchor the frame. That symmetry is key—it provides a sense of stability amidst the visual vibration created by the parallel lines. There’s a slight tonal gradation…
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Beach in black
There is a certain stubbornness in going to the shore at night with a camera and expecting to bring something back other than disappointment. The sea, under moonlight, doesn’t offer you light so much as it withholds it, forcing you to work with the barest scraps. This image was taken under those conditions — no artificial illumination, only the moon high above, its reflection tearing a path across the water. I composed with the reflection as the spine of the frame, letting it run vertically to draw the viewer’s eye from the immediate foreground into the distant horizon. The exposure was a balancing act: enough to reveal the texture of…
