ARTIST STATEMENT

Above all, I am a landscape photographer. Yet, I understand "landscape" broadly, referring to emotional and perceptual impact. If we free ourselves from the trap of opposing two big abstract concepts, like "nature" and "culture," we realize that a portrait is also a landscape and that cities and traditions are landscapes too. Photography is the medium I have chosen to explore that relationship.

From the photo I initially shot to the one that finally gets printed and materializes, there is a slow and gradual process. The first experience, shooting, is bodily grounded: I am immersed in a situation that, all of a sudden, and with a simple finger movement, I frame and cut out from what is happening around me. This exercise is usually emotionally driven and requires some form of a present-at-the-moment mental state. However, the photo still needs to be finished.

Editing is the next step and, in contrast to shooting, is a very intentional mental state. Usually, the raw image is somehow different from the image I imagined when shooting. So, I edit and re-edit it until I get closer to the image I initially imagined. Indeed, by editing, I intentionally bring the raw material as close as possible to the picture I imagined when shooting. The complete process goes from imagination to memory, back and forward many times. If shooting is emotionally driven, the editing is entirely intentional. In the beginning, the process is very much here-and-now, the editing, on the other hand, is mainly there-and-then. The image that finally gets printed is the result of these endless associations between memory and imagination.