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@2 years agoAndrea Simonato
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself. I’m 38 and I live in Este, a little town in the north of Italy. I have studied as architect but I’m working as web-designer. What excites me at moment? These days I’m in love with the music of Jóhann Jóhannsson, I find it really inspiring.
There are never any people in your photographs, why is this?
That’s true, indeed I don’t know if there is a good reason for that, no kind of premeditation I mean. Maybe this is due to the fact that at the moment I’m more interested in the traces of human passage rather than the human being itself. Anyway, even if there are no people in my photos, somehow every subject talks about them.
The objects you photograph are often very ephemeral: peeling posters, dead animals, and abandoned buildings. Do you see you work, in part, as a kind of document, or evidence for things that will not exist for very long?
Yes, they may be read as a kind of evidence. In general I’m fascinated by the frailty of the kind of stuff which stands on the edge of disappearing, this can be the peeled posters or the garbage on the side of the street. Things that have lost their original function and therefore seems to have lost all meaning too. If we could take a step beyond, we may consider any ordinary thing as something on the edge of disappearing just because of its familiarity to our eyes. In that sense I would like to think that photography could work as a kind of redemption for all those things, a way to put a new significance into them.
How important is the idea of landscape to your work?
It’s really important to me, but my idea of landscape is not based on the large views as it commonly used to be, instead I like to think of landscape as a construction of a series of images. Like a puzzle, where each piece contributes in the definition of a bigger image.
You have a very strong compositional style. Can you talk a
little about the significance of it to your work?
I don’t know if this could be about compositional style but I always loved the kind of image that seem to express a sensation of calm, they’re often so static almost suspended out of time. So when shooting a photo, what I’m always trying to achieve is that kind of feeling. I would like to get an image that speaks through calm and silence.
Could you talk a little about your artistic practice? How do you go about creating your images? What role does chance and circumstance play and how important are technical decisions, like camera choice, to your work?
There isn’t any straight workflow indeed. You know, sometimes I work on ideas, other times it may happen that I started from a clue suggested by a previous photo, or something else I’ve seen, but quite often I prefer to follow the feeling of the moment, I guess that it’s a common practise. Of course, technical decisions matter a lot, it’s about the mood you’re meant to get from the shot. Using a Holga rather than a digital camera makes a difference, it’s the same with the kind of film you use.
I really love your approach to landscape as the creation of images that fit together to form something more. How do you see the relationship between your photographs and do you consciously create that dialogue?
Except for the ‘Stop’ series there isn’t any planning idea behind those relationships. Each photo is firstly thought by itself, it’s only in a following step that I can go find some relation between each one. Somehow, I think it’s a further kind of composition, something like film editing I guess.
And finally, are you working on anything in particular at
the moment? What is inspiring you right now?
Of course I’m still working on the same old stuff, but I’ve also got something new, it isn’t really well focused yet, so I prefer not to talk about it now.
What is inspiring me at this moment? I can’t really exactly say, there are a lot of things… but for sure I would like to be inspired by every little everyday thing, I think it would be a great goal.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_coso/
@2 years ago with 5 notesNate Sexton
First of all, can you tell us a little about yourself, where you’re from, what you do, what your excited about at the moment?My name is Nathaniel Charles Sexton. I go by Nate. I’m twenty-one years old. I live about an hour out of Chicago, in Northwest Indiana, a town called Valparaiso. I really hate having a job. So, I try my hardest to avoid having to get one, although, now, because of my classes next semester, I’m going to have to get a job to maintain a car. This whole car and money thing should be preoccupying me, but I’m really irresponsible so I’m just ignoring it. I go to school for philosophy and English literature, but I want to pursue a doctorate in film studies. I spend most of my free time watching movies, doing that internet thing, or having fun with my friends. What am I excited about? I really want to make a road trip out to Yellowstone National Park before the end of this summer, that’s something I’m very excited for. Oh, and at the end of this month Music Box Theatre is playing John Carpenter’s The Thing as a midnight movie - a bunch of friends and I are going up, it should be good. I like to be naked. I’m a hard determinist. I’m probably the happiest person I know.
How did you begin in photography and what does it mean to you now? I would like to say I began a long time ago as a small child, watching horror movies from the 1980’s and becoming absolutely obsessed and horrified by the images within them. But, that’s sort of abstract. Really, a friend of mine has a rather profound love for disposable cameras; after I had spent way too much money on instant film, it served as a great inspiration for trying something new. That was about a year ago. Ever since, I’ve been shooting. Now, it’s all about making life more interesting. Taking pictures really makes you look at things and imagine a frame floating over it all. It makes images more beautiful, no matter how common they are. For that reason alone, photography is very important to me.
A lot of your work is of your friends. What part do they play for you in your photography? My friends are inspiration, models, and rides. Seriously. they’re the people I surround myself with. I like them, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone more in my own photographs. Plus, it’s a lot easier and a lot more fun to give them direction, if a photograph is staged. I mean, I like putting my models in uncomfortable physical positions.
Do you have a favourite photograph? What’s its story? One of my favorites is definitely of that chandelier in the reverb chamber, up in Chicago. Some friends of mine live in a great apartment building off of Clark or something. The whole building looks and feels like an old hotel. Anyways, the door has a little hexagonal room, with a super high ceiling. Because of the shape of the room, any sound verbs like crazy. We call it the reverb chamber, and drum on the radiator down there. In the center, hanging there, is this fantastic chandelier. I snapped a photo in the middle of a little drum session. I guess even if my friends aren’t in the photographs, they’re still there.
Who is the girl with the red hair? That would be Alyssa Johnson. She has really pretty hair. She’s very sensitive and has a very serious anxiety problem.
I spy with my internet stalking eye that you’ve recently been included in Blood of the Young’s first zine. What do you think about online shows and collectives like this? Oh, these are amazing and very important. The information age had done a lot for a lot of people, but it almost seemed like visual artists had fallen behind musicians, storytellers, and other folk who were taking greater advantage of the internet to share, inspire, and communicate. Now, I’m not sure. I think we’re all doing a phenomenal job. White spaces are awesome, and I would love to find myself somewhere like that someday, but the virtual space is perhaps a more formidable force: it is bound to have more freedom, more diversity, more ideas, more… just about everything other than price tags and crooked frames. You have a greater reach, in terms of immediate exposure, and just an easier and more accessible means of distribution. It’s pretty awesome. The physicality of print has its power, that’s no doubt. Nonetheless, these digital collectives and virtual galleries are really coming into their own, and a strong sense of minimalist and or modern design is really proving it all.
Why ‘no sex, bone dragon’? “NoSex,” is an affirmation of my practiced Epicureanism. Epicureanism is the enlightened hedonistic school formed by the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. Epicurus was a bad ass who argued that having sex is sweet, but reading a book or tending to a garden could be sweeter; he was the first philosopher to give qualitative values to pleasures, other than say “bad” or “good.” Uhm, bone dragons just create a great visual image. Dragons are enormous monsters that swallow men whole, and here is this resurrected dragon, stripped of his scales and think flesh… just bones. I have this whole goblin thing, I don’t really know.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanielcsexton/
http://inthereverbchamber.blogspot.com/
@2 years ago with 11 notes
