Portfolio

SARALANDO Summer 2010 World edition

The Portfolio ISSUE

editorial I’ve never been good at putting together a portfolio “the way it's supposed to be”.

Not that I don't know how it’s done: I know the theory and teach that to my students, with the recommendation to do as I say and not as I do.

And indeed I have my good old traditional portfolio: 25 prints strung between a black card and a transparency with a selection that changes depending on the person I need to show them to, implying that I am precisely the way they want me to be, I am the person they are looking for: I never wanted anything else than doing what they want me to do.

photographer must be able to meet the needs of his/ her customers while keeping his/her vision, which is a sometimes fast, sometimes difficult process but never boring one.

The decision to combine pictures, text and graphics is simply the one that best sums up my background.

I got to photography later in the years, starting from words and then going through product design and graphic design and all my metamorphoses were never overwhelming, but rather a slow and organic process: there is always part of what I was that goes into what I will become.

But then.

But then I still have the feeling of telling a broken story, of having somehow betrayed what I really am, contradictory and confusing as it may be.

The first time I showed my portfolio to someone I was told that I was “too commercial to be an art photographer and too artsy to be a commercial photographer” and that I should have to choose one or the other.

But I want the cake, I want to eat it too, and I want the recipe to make myself some more if I ever want to.

Therefore, next to what I do because I have to, I create small slots of time and space to be what I want to be.

I haven’t been given my first camera when I was in the cradle, I don’t have an academic curricula based around photography that educated my way of seeing the world.

The pictures I take are not “my children” and will not change the world. But still a day without pictures is way worse than one filled with them and photography is the medium I use to tell those little stories that make my world meaningful to me.

Mixing images, words, commercial and personal work together is the only way I know to keep my portfolio true to who I am and using the magazine format allows me to do it in an organized way.

With time I discovered what any chick flick or soppy TV series has been preaching from the dawn of men: honesty is the best way, perhaps the only one, to follow if you wish for a happy ending. The jobs in which I pour my heart and that I do out of passion are the ones that led me to collaborate with the most amazing customers creating those pictures I’m prouder of.

Of course it’s often necessary to find a compromise between passion and duty and at the end of the day the

Photography to me started as a game and if I’m being honest... it still is. The moment a piece of the world is captured forever is still made of magic and discovery and a small feeling of triumph, like catching a firefly in a jar.

It doesn't matter if fireflies are just those little monsters with pincer jaws they use to paralyze snails and reduce them to a pulp to eat them...

I guess part of magic is deciding which details you willingly ignore.

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Fashion

006 Modern Fairytale 030 Aerial 062 Back in Black 100 Precious 116 Summer Light 128 Caught in a Dream

Stories & People 016 Story: The Amazing Enrique 044 Music: Maranza 060 Light & Shadow 106 People: Elena Cucci 140 Interview: A World Without Gravity

by Giovanni Cervi

Photography 022 Howto: Behind the Shot 070 Film: Analog 076 Event: Eyes Wide Open 146 Ghettophotography: Mud

Other

024 Food 026 Fitness: Your Shape 036 Projects: Head Project 048 Art: Traces of Wonderland 084 Diaries: Across USA 092 Coming Soon: Magpies 094 Manifesto 096 Places: Bassano 110 Travel: Hotel Elda 125 Design: Nadir 150 Self: Geometry Lessons for Flying Seeds

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Modern Fairytale a 12 hour notice, an empty apartment, a flight for Tokyo to be caught, and editorial shooting for East&West magazine to finish in time. model Meloni Mitchell | styling Sara Lando

Modern Fairytale <<I have a new opportunity to get some tearsheets in a printed magazine, called East&West.

The editor wrote to me today and asked if I would be interested in publishing an 8-10 page editorial in the magazine... She wants to call it something like “Meloni Mitchell Moments”... I really like working with you, and I love your style and you’re super fast! So I wanted to ask you... would you like to do another shoot with me, TOMORROW?!>> One of the basic rules of my line of work is never to pronounce anything sounding like <<tomorrow is going to be a quiet day>>, ever. That's because within a very short amount of time the following 24 hours will become a series of incredible unexpected adventures, last-minute changes and weird improvisations.

I had already worked with Meloni Mitchell briefly before and one of the reason I accepted this gig when she called me was the pleasure of working with a model who is not only beautiful and amazing in front of the camera, but who also brings a real contribution to the photos.

Meloni was going to leave for Tokyo very soon, to work as a model and narrate the life of a western girl in an eastern country from the pages of East & West.

Initially the editorial was conceived to be a collection of several photos taken from Meloni’s portfolio, but the idea of creating something special from scratch, proposed by Meloni herself, was accepted with enthusiasm by the magazine, whose only constraint would have been time: the magazine was going to be printed soon and the post-produced pictures would have had to be ready in a couple of days.

In the following hours we began to exchange pictures and references to set the kind of mood we wanted to achieve (Meloni defined it beautifully using the term “urban fairytale”) and to decide some technical details and figure out the location. We wanted to shoot outside, using Milan as a backdrop; as a backup, we could use the empty apartment, freshly painted and ready to be returned to the landlord.

I got in touch with Luisa Bernascone, the owner of Dorafalù atelier, asking her to lend us some clothes for the shooting.

I explained to her over the phone the kind of atmosphere we were going after and the next morning I showed up in Inzago to be presented with a spectacular selection of clothes taken from their archives, which perfectly embodied the kind of woman we had in mind: romantic, dreamy, but also playful, confident and ready to plunge headlong into a new adventure.

An unexpected rain prevented us from shooting on location, the make-up artist didn’t show up and we didn't have a single pair of shoes that made any sense.

And at the end of the day that became the concept around which we built our story, as we worked using background elements and accessories made from the few things that were left in the house: wrapping paper, cardboard, twine, white paint, adhesive tape.

The boots in the photos are the ones that Meloni was wearing when I arrived, the only ones that had not yet been tucked in a suitcase, Meloni herself did the makeup.

It was one of the most fun sets I have been working on.

The next two nights were spent post producing and preparing images for printing.

And despite all the unexpected, the end result was appreciated enough to grant us the cover.

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AD client | DingusDudus

story

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages...”

The ringmaster shouts with his big booming voice, glorious in his bright, gaudy topcoat — red with gold trim — and his tall top hat.

Everybody is gushing with expectation because they sure enjoyed the trapeze act, the clowns, the dancing bear, the firebreather and the jugglers, but every single one of them is there for the same reason, the closing act: the Amazing Enrique.

The light is dim as he enters the ring and he sure does look like a normal man, from afar. He’s not wearing bold colors he’s not jumping, skipping or spinning, he’s not cheering the crowd, who’s suddenly silent.

It’s not the silence of disappointment, mind you: these people knew what to expect the moment they bought the ticket because they have heard the tales and the tales are consistent, which seems quite an amazing thing itself, considering how difficult it is to find a hint of coherence in this place and age. Even more amazingly, each and everyone of them has arrived on time for the show even though the little pink advertising poster they saw didn’t say when, or even where, the show was being held.

They just knew where to go and they went, following

the kind of internal compass that gnaws your guts to let you know when something is right.

Everybody now is holding their breath because they can’t say a word.

Not that they’re trying, really. It’s just one of those moments in which everyone stops talking at the same time and that’s when you usually find yourself saying something utterly embarrassing aloud. Except no one does.

The Amazing Enrique gazes around for what looks like an eternity and then explains to the crowd what he’s going to do.

He’s a monster tamer, you know. We’re not talking lions or tigers, here. Not even two headed raging rhinos.

The Amazing Enrique handles and tames monsters who can really kill you, but only after they are done with you.

And so it begins: he asks a young lady in the front row to come forward. She looks around, seemingly scared and excited as she stumbles a little but doesn’t fall. The Amazing Enrique asks her to close her eyes and looks into her right ear. He raises an eyebrow as he exclaims “there you are!” he pokes around with his fingertips and he starts pulling something out of the girl’s ear, like a magician would do with handkerchiefs.

A horrible creature starts taking shape behind the woman, the crowd begins to roar and a little girl in the back bursts into tears. The monster is growling and grinding its teeth while the Amazing Enrique explains to the crowd that they are looking at a very beautiful specimen of “You’re not enough”.

Young girls seem to be their favourite environment, in which they are able to grow strong and undisturbed.

“This one is still fairly young- says Enrique- but he’s quite lively. They can grow to double this size in a couple of years, with the right circumstances”

wiggles friendlily.

“You are not appreciated enough: let’s find something good for you”, says the monster. “You are not bouncy enough to jump from a bridge, that’s not a good idea”...

“You are not fat enough to skip that delicious looking ice-cream: let’s have some!”

The young lady raises her head and looks at the nownot-so-threatening-you’re-not-enough-monster and scratches its head. The monster squeals with joy.

Then she looks up at the Amazing Enrique and smiles.

The crowd cheers and whistles and claps.

He dusts off and says boldly: “Who’s next?”

One by one they all step into the ring and let the Amazing Enrique pull out their inner monsters: “you’llnever-do-it”, “loneliness”, “everybody-will-find-outyou’re-a-fraud”, “being-left-out”, “getting-old”, “beingmediocre” and many, many more.

They all walk out the tent bringing their monster back home, as allies, pets and sometimes even friends.

It’s almost dawn when the show is over and the roadies start dismantling the tent.

The Amazing Enrique steps into his trailer and tries to catch some sleep, before starting it all over again, in another city, for another night.

“You are not beautiful enough, you are not clever enough, you are not thin enough, you are not loved enough” the monster growls incessantly and the young lady curls up and starts sobbing.

And that’s when the Amazing Enrique does his thing, grabbing the beast by its nostrils and lifting it above his head, spinning with it across the ring.

They start fighting and the sand is lifted in clouds that make it hard to see clearly.

Everybody is on their feet now, trying not to miss a thing, fearing the screams they can hear now and then might not be coming from the monster.

This goes on for what seems to be a very long time but is actuallY little more than an eyeblink and -by the end of it- the monster is about as big as a small dog, and it sara lando | 18

AD client | Livior

howto

behind the shot from setting up to post production everything that goes into a beauty shot model Federica | styling Sara Lando

gear

Beauty shots are usually about the face and this allows you to work easily even in a very restricted set.

In this example, the subject is lit by a single beauty dish placed camera right, high above.

This type of modifier offers several advantages:

A beauty dish is a light modifier that has two dishes facing each other, the light is reflected from one into the other and onto the subject using a parabolic reflector to distribute light towards a focal point; the result is a diffused but rather directional illumination. The quality light created by a beauty dish is between that of a direct flash and a softbox, hence giving the image a wrapped, contrasted look that can be softened with the use of a “diffusion sock” .

To achieve a narrower and more controlled beam of light, a grid is used.

Even before makeup, using a large frontal source of light makes the skin appear more even.

• It’s a large light source that uniformly lights the face minimizing skin blemishes.

• It’s a type of light that is hard enough to obtain good contrast and vivid colors.

• Catchlights are more pleasing The use of a single light underexposes the background, which is therefore lit separately using a second unit.

Flash lights were used instead of continuous lights to avoid heat that might make the model sweat and therefore ruin makeup. Also, the excess of light would have made the pupil smaller and less attractive, while working with strobes allows you to keep your subject in dim light during the shooting.

A 100mm prime lens was used, to prevent feature’s distortion. This implies a bigger distance between photographer and subject than a normal lens would require and allows you to work from behind the light, minimizing the risk of flare.

Quick tips for beauty shots: • let the model sit on a stool or mark her spot with masking tape to help her keep her position during the entire shooting.

• communicate clearly to your model what kind of result you have in mind, letting her know if you need a neutral expression or something different. Use references.

• take several versions of the same shot and confront them later on a bigger screen: with this kind of image it’s all in the details!

Shooting several images allows you to have a wider selection to choose from. In this kind of pictures the model needs to move slowly without drastically changing her pose in between shots.

The shadows reveal a kind of lighting that isn’t too soft and is still contrasty

Some people prefer round catchlights rather than the square ones produced by softboxes

The decorations have been applied using petroleum jelly, brushed directly onto skin. A shiny transparent lip gloss makes lips reflective without changing their natural color.

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All imperfections are corrected in Adobe Photoshop, leaving the image as clean as possible without compromising skin texture

Finally, color correction curves are applied to make the image warmer and give it a cast.

food

banana muffins 1/2 cup butter, room temperature 1 cup granulated sugar 2 large eggs 2 large bananas, ripe, mashed 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts or chocolate chips

Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.

Cream butter and sugar with an electric hand-held mixer until light and fluffy.

Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.

Smash banana with a fork and add banana and vanilla to the mix; beat until smooth.

Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Stir flour mixture into butter mixture.

Stir until dry ingredients are moistened then gently stir in chopped nuts or chocolate chips.

Spoon banana muffin batter into prepared muffin cups or liners.

Bake at 400째F for about 15-18 minutes, or until tops are lightly browned.

Cool muffins by turning them out onto rack to cool longer.

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chocolate cookies 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature 3/4 cup white sugar 3/4 cup firmly light brown sugar 2 large eggs 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F with rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a bowl beat butter until smooth and creamy.

Add the white and brown sugars and beat with electric mixer until fluffy (about 2 minutes).

Beat in eggs, one at a time, making sure to beat well after each addition. Add the vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and beat until incorporated, adding the chocolate chips about half way through mixing. If you find the dough very soft, cover and refrigerate until firm (about 30 minutes).

For large cookies, drop about 2 tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets.

Bake about 12 - 14 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges. Cool completely on wire rack.

Makes about 4 dozen - 3 inch round cookies.

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fitness

Your Shape

At the launch of Ubisoft game she endorses, Maddalena Corvaglia shows some simple exercises to get back into shape. model Maddalena Corvaglia | styling Stefano Rigattieri

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Your Shape is the first fitness game that comes with a camera peripheral included inside the box.

Featuring Ubisoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s proprietary Body Tracking technology, the game scans your body and then projects the image onto the TV, creating a personalized and interactive workout.

Based on your specific body shape analysis, fitness level and personal goals, Your Shape is able to recommend the workout program that is best suited for you. The game also features a virtual coach that provides verbal and visual feedback on all of your movements, ensuring that each minute invested achieves maximum results.

I Aerial Prints, color and lightness, for a woman who is a bit of a hippy and ever feminine model Veronica Frasca

projects

HEAD PROJECT One of the ongoing projects I am working on is a series of headshots of people buried in different things.

I have always been interested in people’s faces: I love how everybody is different and special and interesting, with no exception.

This is a very simple concept with a very simple setup, but I really enjoy working on it and people seem to love being buried under the weirdest stuff. Also, people seem to be able to understand why I want their picture taken this way rather than accepting the idea that their face is interesting enough to be the subject of a photograph.

The first person I shot this way was Barbara (next page), buried under soil in her own living room.

Photo after photo people started to be less suspicious when I asked them if they would let me cover them in wacky stuff and take pictures of them and I now have complete strangers writing to me to be a part of the project, which I love.

I try to choose objects or substances that make sense with who my subjects are or what they do and at the same time are going to be visually appealing.

I love how those photographed are friends or normal people rather than beautiful models.

I had to learn this the hard way...

In July 2010 the head project was shown in a solo exhibition in Cascina Irma, Zanè (VI).

I usually light the scene with a single softbox mounted on a boom stand, but when I’m not shooting in my studio it’s easier to use two speedlights shot through white umbrellas to create the even diffuse light I need to keep the style consistent.

A pillow under people’s heads will make them feel more comfortable and raising their head a little is a good idea to have the face at a more pleasing angle.

When covering people in messy stuff I use plastic wrap to protect their clothes and hair, and big plastic sheet under them to make sure I can clean up quickly after the work is done.

Do you want to be a part of this project?

Write a few lines about yourself and what you’d like to be buried in at: info@saralando.com

music

Maranza I’ve known Roberto for years, but I only saw him for the first time when he got in front of my camera, blue eyes piercing through the lens and a touch of nervousness I didn’t recognize as his.

And yet it’s normal, it happens every time.

No matter how self-confident you are, being photographed is an enormous act of trust and you never know what will be captured. I don’t even know myself, at the other side of the camera, but my position is undeniably less awkward.

Roberto is one of the most complex people I know: he controls opposites within him with such apparent ease. He inspires complete trust and at the same time forces you to be on your guard.

Mums love him, but he’s the man your mum warned you about.

Drummer-Roberto isn’t any different. He can be completely aerial yet violent, focused and out of control.

The first time I heard him playing he was enveloped in a Brenda Walsh t-shirt while he pounded the skins as if to thrash them. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde living in the same body, and they found a way to get along.

And, behind the drums, as only in front of the camera, I saw him.

1. What’s the first sound you can remember?

I tried going back through my memory but I only have visual recollections, like the great flowering cherry tree in the garden or my nursery classmate with a runny nose who used to throw wooden blocks at me.

The only sound I can somehow evoke in a clear manner is the too-too tone of those old grey phones with the dialling wheel.

2. Why the drums? What led you to try them the first time and to carry on playing afterwards?

There is a joke that goes a bit like this: “What do you call those guys that always hang around musicians?” “They’re called drummers”.

I don’t know whether it makes people who have never played in a band laugh as well, but it’s saying something that is very true, and that is that the drums aren’t a real and proper musical instrument, but something completely different. I like music, but I’ve always been a real disaster with any musical instrument. Then I discovered these wonderful objects that allow you to play without having to deal with those tedious musical notes, and are also fun to use. Love at first sight, a thunderbolt.

The drums and I have been together for almost 20 years, and I’ve never betrayed them.

3. If you only had one song left to play before you died, what would it be?

I think it would be Demon Cleaner by Kyuss.

As well as being an amazing song, it’s one of the few rock songs where you’re not just “keeping time with kicks and snares and performing deadlifts on the toms”, but is based on a cyclical use of the entire drum set parts.

It’s a bit of a special way to play, at the beginning it gives you a feeling of “compression”, almost choking, as though the drums’ energy were somehow strangled and forced to run around in circles rather than explode.

The end of the song has a more open and sparkling sound, because somehow you just have to have a happy ending, with no regrets.

I’d like to get to my point of death, look back and say “I am the only way”: things went the way they should have, it was good, I gave what I could, now

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please put me in fade out because it’s time to close the show.

So I would play Demon Cleaner.

4. List three songs that every inhabitant of this planet should listen to at least once.

To give you a decent answer I should spend at least a couple of years listening to all the songs I know and then make a selection.

Then I should also lend my ears to every single inhabitant of the earth, to have them “feel” the songs the way I feel them.

So I just have to give you an indecent answer: 1) Blondie - Heart of glass 2) Chuck Berry - My Ding-A-Ling 3) Regina Spektor - Après Moi

left and below: Roberto playing with CSR during a concert in Saronno (VA)

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art

Tracesof

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Tracesof

Wonderland

This work was produced for a little contest held on one of the Internet forums I was reading in 2005.

I usually don’t like contests, but every once a while I like to take part to those that force me to work on something creative when I’m stuck doing commercial work for too long.

Plus, the theme was “Alice in Wonderland” and that’s one of my favourite books from childhood and the one from which I could draw the most visual inspiration.

Of course, even before Tim Burton’s movie, Carroll’s tale was one of the most exploited and clichè and I was trying to find a different take on the subject.

I wanted to investigate what happens to Alice and to Wonderland when Alice grows up and things little by little start losing their magic.

This was way before SyFy took a similar concept and made an awful miniseries on Alice, which I watched from start to finish waiting for the good part to start (which never did). But I’m digressing.

I wanted to keep a cyclic structure: in every picture there is the previous picture and in the first one there is the last, so it starts all over again (in reference to the caucus-race).

In every picture there is a reference to the story and next to it there is a text referring to something that happened in my past that made me “depart from Wonderland”.

The paper used has been stained with tea and

putting together the first letter of each sheet spells the word: ALICE. I decided to depict the caterpillar using dry mushrooms and the pipe as a reference to the character, besides actually putting the caterpillar there, just a dead bug in a casket.

The second panel depicts the queen of hearts and needs a little explanation: in Italy traditional playcards are Latin-suited cards: instead of clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds we have batons, swords, cups and coins.

I decided to use this deck and to use coins in place of hearts because I think the metamorphosis of hearts into coins is a major part in most people’s process leading to adulthood.

Humpty Dumpty is actually from “through the looking glass”, I know, but I couldn’t resist.

The little suicide note next to dead Humpty says “To: All the king’s horses and all the King’s men” The Tea Party picture just shows the remnants of the party and tries to depict the feeling you have when you wake up the night after a great party, just to find the house trashed and all that’s left of the fun is garbage, stains and broken things.

Some may find the white rabbit photograph a little morbid. It was the first panel I designed and the last one I actually photographed and until the last minute I tried to find a suitable alternative (using dead flowers for the talking flowers, for example) but each time I kept going back to the original idea.

This work is still one of those I’m fondest of, and I think it is the most real and honest self -portrait I ever took.

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AD

client | Radio Company

Light and

Prince was shot for Radio Company’s calendar after taking part to “I belli di Company” beauty contest.

I’ve spent 2 days in Mestre, shooting 12 guys and 12 girls, most of whom were in front of the camera for the first time.

Prince, to me, stood out from the group because he looked like he was just there to hang out.

Completely unscared by the lens, he wasn’t trying to impress anyone, he wasn’t “acting like a model”, he wasn’t proving a point.

He was just real and that’s what’s captivating, to me.

S

hadow Adriano is a model/singer who had been cast to work on the set of DeAgostiniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s digital photography course dvd for the nude & glamour issue.

He was a pleasure to work with: extremely professional, nice and easy to direct.

Back then I was working almost nonstop (including nights) on a lot of different projects.

I had been driving for thousands of miles.

I had been on the verge of a breakdown a gazillion times.

But getting to collaborate with amazing people to create something beautiful makes it all worth it, at the end of the day.

Back in Black Urban or tribal inspiration, raw textiles and vintage items to rediscover the most classical of all (non)colors

Analog

When you take pictures as a day job and keep on taking pictures as a hobby as well, sometimes the boundaries are a bit foggy. The real advantage of film over digital, to me, has nothing to do with quality or purity: it’s that film requires time and a good dose of trust and hope, characteristics that make film an unsuitable candidate for an urgent commercial gig (and apparently they all are). This means I can only play with film when I’m dedicating time and effort to myself and myself only: a little ritual that reminds me of the reasons why I love photography so much.

The first time I entered a darkroom was to watch my ex-boyfriend develop some pictures he took.

I didn’t even own a camera, at the time, nor I was interested in owning one.

Except for the moments when you first see the image appear in the tray full of developer under a dim red light, it was more or less the equivalent of watching grass grow.

Plus, I always feel the need to pee when I’m in a restricted space knowing I won’t be able to leave for a while. I’ve always been the worst hide-and-seek player.

I started being interested in photography thanks to a digital camera. I had bought one (a 1.3 megapixel Sony MVC FD 88, the top of the line, at the time) because I needed to take a lot of pictures for university and I was really bad at that, since at the time I only cared about becoming a designer and making the world a better place through environmentally responsible design and cute objects. This meant spending a lot of money in film and prints and a lot of time reshooting half-assed photos I needed to scan anyway.

Digital photography seemed to be the obvious, most rational choice.

Free to take as many pictures as my hard drive could fit (and keep in mind that the Mavica could store 10 high-res pictures in a single floppy disk!), I started spending my days shooting everything I could, at first. Then I

found out about self-timers and began using photography to make sure my butt wasn’t as big as it looked in the mirror and then as a cheap substitute for a shrink.

It seems to be very common among female photographers and I’m not sure I’m interested in knowing why that is: I just know that since then photography has been what has kept me mentally stable through thick and thin.

The next big step for me was starting to publish my pictures on the Internet and learning about photography from people all over the world, through forums, sites and blogs.

At that point I realized I knew very little about the technical aspects of photography and was starting to be frustrated about my camera’s limitations (and about my own, as well).

That’s when I decided to enroll for a student exchange and spend the last year of University at RISD, in Providence (RI).

For the first time I was surrounded by people breathing and sweating photography 24/7 and for the first time I bought a “real” camera: a Pentax ZX-M with a lens whose quality was more similar to the bottom of a bottle.

But it was mine and it was awesome.

I was taught to develop and print film and I started spending countless nights in the RISD darkroom.

There is something weird happening to time and space when you are in a darkroom: everything becomes more vivid, because in

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film

such a dim light your senses become sharper and you find yourself floating in your head at the rate of the chemicals whooshing in the tray.

By the time you leave this altered state of consciousness, you find you’ve been in there for hours. I guess that’s what people who say they’ve been abducted by aliens feel like.

I wish I could say that over time I’ve become an amazing darkroom technician, that I’ve learnt all the tricks and all the secrets and that if Ansel Adams could see my prints he would squeal like a girl and wet his pants.

That’s not the case. I don’t have a personal darkroom in my apartment and I hit one way too seldom.

Yet I keep on shooting film when I start losing grip on reality, when everything goes too fast and I need a break from myself.

I think it’s more about the process than it is about the result: winding the film, manually setting every knob, spending time composing the image into the frame before I shoot.

Over the years, people have been giving me dusty old cameras that were sitting in their attics and I have bought several more since I started being a professional photographer.

Depending on how I feel and what I want to do I can pick among toy cameras, 35mm SLR, medium format cameras and start messing around without really knowing what I’m doing but enjoying it immensely.

I do wish someday I’ll be good at this, but the difference between analogue and digital -in my case- is that when it comes to analogue I’m in no rush.

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and the thought is somehow soothing.

Using film instead of digital seems to promote a different interaction with subjects as well.

At the beginning of photography people would sit very still in front of the lens for minutes to allow the camera to take a clean shot and stillness and silence were at the base of a little interesting experiment suggested by Roswell Angier in his book “Train Your Gaze”.

You take someone you know well: a lover, a friend, a parent, and you ask them to be photographed for an hour, without actually telling them what you are going to do. You just let them know they need to sit there and that you will both be silent. Then you shoot an entire roll of film, 36 exposures, in that amount of time. In complete silence, while looking at the subject instead of hiding behind the camera.

At first it's almost embarrassing and the tension seems unbearable.

Every gesture becomes significant, after a while, and I think that is the best example of what in analog photography works for me: it makes little things matter, in an era that is all about the big, the bold and the fast.

It’s all about accepting that the amount of changes you can apply is limited, so you need to try to get it right the first time.

And most of all it’s about learning to cope with failure, because sometimes the photographs might have been shot perfectly, but then you screw up while developing them and you just need to accept that and move on without moaning too much about it, because, after all, it’s just a game.

AD client | Elena Bittante

events

eyes wide

open

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.â&#x20AC;? Stacia Tauscher

In 2006 a group of Manfrotto employees known as the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), volunteered for sensitive issues and works on social and environmental initiatives implementing projects in line with the corporate policy of respect for society and the environment in which it operates.

Among the many initiatives involving the community, in 2007 they started the project “PHOTOGRAPHY CLASSES IN SCHOOLS”.

The activity is designed to raise awareness and introduce children to the world of photography through collaborations with local primary schools.

In 2009 the class benefiting from this was the Elementary School of Campese 4th grade.

I was chosen to teach this class, along with Antonio Bordin and the children’s two teachers, Elena and Ilenia.

The course focused mainly on visual education rather than mere photographic techniques.

I decided to build the whole course around a main theme: “How I see myself, how others see me”, to start a discussion about self-image and the many ways it can be manipulated: in fact this is the age when children (girls, mostly) start comparing themselves to what they see in magazines and TV shows, often leading to feelings of inadequacy, eating disorders, or even just lack of creativity due to conformity to standards.

We did this by asking the children to describe themselves with several mediums (written word, drawings, collages) while learning how to take pictures of themselves and their classmates and showing them examples and works from other photographers.

Manfrotto gave us all the cameras and tripods and the

kids, divided into six groups of three, would follow our directions to reach a definite goal: it could be exploring movement, or being aware of the direction of light. It could be learning how to frame a picture or even use a camera timer to take a self-portrait.

In one of the children’s favourite days they got to bring the 3 objects that were the most precious to them; they took pictures of them and then they described the reasons why they cared so much about those specific things.

At the end of the 10 weeks we put together a book collecting all the material we had produced each week, a little time capsule that contained a very complex and interesting picture of the whole class and the individual children.

Manfrotto decided to print several copies of the book, and each kid was given one, a memory they’ll probably cherish when they’ll become adults.

Entering the class for the first time I was ready to teach these kids about photography and I expected it to be fun. What I didn’t expect was the amount of things these children and the teachers have taught me over the months and I really can’t wait to see the amazing adults they’ll turn into.

left: an unusual group photo: each kid was pictured alone in front of a white background and then composed into an image that transforms the whole class into one abstract image below: the same pictures used for the composite on the left were given to the children to create their own interpretations of a group photo

sara lando | 77

Above: These are some of the self portraits the kid took on self portrait day: they were alone in the gym, with a camera on tripod and pre-set lights. I was only there to push the button starting the self timer, but I was turned the other way and couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see what they were doing. The only rule they had was standing inside the tape-square, to make sure they were properly lit.

sara lando | 78

left: a small selection of images taken by the kids during the course: they explored several photographic subjects, learning how to compose a portrait, how to stop movement or how to convey movement using shutter speed and even learning how to tell a story using images rather than words.

Lino Manfrotto is a well-known Bassano-based company, a leading designer, manufacturer and distributor of media for the photography, video and entertainment markets.

Founded in Bassano del Grappa in 1970 by Lino Manfrotto, a professional photographer, the company has grown over the years and was acquired by Vitec Group, a British multinational stock company, in 1989.

It nevertheless retained its Italian management.

It continued to grow until it became a proper division, the Vitecgroup Imaging & Staging Division that Mr Manfrotto leads, which controls other companies in Italy and abroad. The division now has 1000 employees with over 150 million euro in revenue, of which 90% abroad, with offices and factories located in 10 countries.

Italian offices and operations are divided among the headquarters in Bassano del Grappa (VI), Feltre (BL) and Mogliano (VE), for a total of 655 employees.

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diaries

Across

USA

17 states in 20 days taking pictures and eating junk food.

If thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not your idea of heavenly holiday, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re probably not the best candidate for travelling with us.

We got married on April, 19th 2008. The wedding reception was held in a pub, since the only thing I was asked for by my soon-to-be husband was for beer to be there (usually weddings are all about fancy wines, around here).

The plan was to have as much fun as we possibly could, get drunk beyond our wits and hope that people would stick to the plan. For as much as I can recall (which isn’t a lot, I’m afraid) we succeeded.

On April 20th I woke up hugging a huge stuffed crocodile I didn’t remember as being mine.

Someone the night before had cleaned me up, made me wear my pajamas and somehow tucked me into bed.

Right then and there I knew I had chosen the right man.

The first task I had to complete as the brand new Mrs. Locatelli was a pleasant one: our honeymoon was waiting for us and suitcases had to be packed.

How hard could it be?

We left Italy carrying only 2 pairs of underpants, no socks whatsoever and the bottom part of my pajamas.

To be fair, I also carried a lot of other stuff, but to say that it had a purpose might be a bit of a stretch: my stuffed rabbit, some purple markers, paper bags and plastic beads probably made sense that morning but I can’t say I can find it now.

But no matter how hungover I might be, I never forget to bring photo gear. Lots of it.

Digital and analog. And accessories. And a journal to write in.

We flew to Amsterdam and then to San Francisco, where we rented a car and started our journey that crossed 17 different states and ended 20 days later in New York.

My main goal was to sleep in motel rooms to take pictures for a small side project about non-places, as described by French anthropologist Marc Augé.

We didn’t really care about route 66 and big attractions (even tough we took pride in renewing our wedding vows in front of Elvis in Las Vegas).

We wanted roadside America: the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker City, a small pine tree in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, Swetsville Zoo in Colorado, with weird creatures built from sara lando | 86

our trip in numbers 7560 kilometers 4698 miles 1612 photos 1475 miles of twine (largest ball of twine) 842 “have a nice day” 750 rock’n roll songs 500 extra dollars to drop the car in NY 205 minutes of video shot 120 dollars won in las vegas 100 dollars played in las vegas 140 minutes spent in the subway 54 liters of water 52 polaroid 50 baby-carrots bought in bryce canyon 34 showers 29 people claiming italian roots 28 hamburgers 22 dollars spent for 22 useless items 22 pound in exceeded luggage 21 hours of flight 20 days 18 “I would like to live here” places 17 states 14 motels 13 videocast 11 bridges crossed 8 pizzas 7 travel guides 7 deer spotted 6 freaks in coney island 6 friends visited 5 hours spent taking pictures in death valley 4 calamities avoided 4 wheels 3 really healthy meals 3 real artists met 2 morons travelling with a paper bag 2 pairs of real cowboy boots 2 days of bad weather 1 afternoon at the pool 1 red tower 1 road 1 lost stuffed rabbit 1 retrieved stuffed rabbit 1 huge nosebleed event 1 happy birthday balloon 1 polaroid cut in a half 1 taxi ride 1 crying taxi driver 1 stalking Angela Lansbury mission 1 rock’n roll wedding 1 tree stuck between rocks 0 regrets

page 84-85: rock formations next to highway 15, route to Zion, NV previous page: Great Salt Lakes, UT right top: wonder tower, Genoa CO right middle: Longaberger basket factory, OH right bottom: Coney Islan, NY

car parts, farm machinery, and scrap metal.

We were on a quest for the best burger in the US and we think we found it in Goodland, KS where we had lunch in a little diner by the Old US highway 24.

We had some old friends across the country to visit and we got to meet some amazing people on the road, like Josh -who was on his third day of work and sold us our cowboy boots. Or Jerry, the owner of the wonder tower in Genoa, CO, who sure is one amazing old man.

We would drive 4 to 8 hours per day, stopping to shoot pictures and little videos or just because a sign caught our attention.

Then we’d check in into a motel at night, take pictures for my project and then edit pictures and video to share with friends and family who were following us on the web.

I got to take Alessandro to eat pancakes in my favourite breakfast place, in Wickenden St, Providence. He showed me around the Nintendo World Store with starry eyes. One of our friends gave us as a wedding present a whole afternoon inside the International Center of Photography archives, where I got to hold in my hands original prints from my favourite photographers.

Some might object that this isn’t really a proper honeymoon, but I really can’t think of anything better than doing what you love most with whom you love most.

Above: Leonard Knight, sitting inside one of his creation in Salvation Mountain, Niland, CA. the construction is made from adobe, straw, and thousands of gallons of paint. It was created by Leonard to convey the message that â&#x20AC;&#x153;God Loves Everyone.â&#x20AC;?

Right: Abusing the fisheye in Death Valley, NV

coming soon

Magpies A widowed woman unable to carry on and who only lives in the odd chapters.

A fundamentally optimistic man who lives in the even chapters and is about to find out a terrible truth about his own identity.

These are the premises of Magpies, the graphic novel I’ve been working on and which will be ready, hopefully, at some point in 2011.

This is a project that has been going on for years, often neglected for long periods of time, always haunting me in the back of my mind.

I used analogue and digital technologies, in form of photographs, collages, drawings and photomontages; I wanted to break free from restrictions imposed by my work: I didn’t want to spend my time caring about the rules of how a photograph should be made, I don’t like all the fuss around the “digital vs analogue” issue, I don’t care how much post production is put into a single photo. All I wanted was to grab the images I had in mind and spread them onto a piece of paper so that

they would stop bugging me.

Using a medium like the graphic novel to tell a story, allowed me to explore narrative possibilities which are very different from those granted by a single photograph or even a series of photos.

Combining text and images, you can explore a concept from different points of view simultaneously, creating a bond with the reader, who is to participate more actively in the unfolding of the plot, creating a short circuit between words and pictures.

There are more layers.

The title refers to a traditional nursery rhyme for children that goes: “One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret Never to Be Told”.

The narrative is divided into seven chapters, which mimic the rhyme and try to shed light on one question: who are we, really? And how do we change when we relate to other people around us? sara lando | 92

AD client | DingusDudus

Manifesto

1. You don’t need to tell the truth in a picture, but you need to be true to yourself when you shoot it.

2. Take pictures because you have something to say and not because you want others to say something to you.

3. Technique is just a tool. Everything that floats your boat is valid.

4. Never publish a picture you’d be ashamed to show your family.

5. Don’t let bad crits take you down, but be lucid enough to see the truth in them.

6. You are allowed to make mistakes.

7. No bullshit. Dig deeper.

8. Take your time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that stuff. This doesn’t mean you’re allowed to stop when things get difficult.

9. Learn something new every day.

10. Don’t be scared to start on something you (yet) don’t know how to do.

11. Don’t sell your work to someone you have no respect for.

12. Stay independent. What you do is meant to keep you sane, not to make you rich.

13. Learn from other people’s work.

14. Have faith. You always find a way, even when you think you won’t.

15. Remember to laugh.

16. Help those who are starting out. Nothing you do is precious enough to be kept hidden: the real value is in the way you do it.

17. Don’t kill yourself. Might look good in a biography, but is not very clever.

places

Bassano Born and raised in Bassano del Grappa, I had sworn to myself that I would have left as soon as possible, leaving all the cuteness and bonbonniere-like houses behind me, and I did. Yet, this is the place I always come back to, because it took me a lot of travelling to find out that, after all, â&#x20AC;&#x153;there is no place like homeâ&#x20AC;?.

The artist Jacopo Bassano was born, worked, and died in Bassano and took it as his surname. Ernest Hemingway spent many days in Bassano during his days as an ambulance driver in the war and eventually settled there as part of A Farewell to Arms.

Many came by and fell in love with this little pretty city by the mountains.

The name means Bassano of Mount Grappa, as a memorial to the soldiers killed during WWI. I grew up with tales of war and resistance: In World War II, after the Armistice with Italy, the city was invaded

by German troops, who killed or deported numerous inhabitants. If you walk along “Viale dei Martiri” you can enjoy a beautiful view of the mountains interrupted only by a line of nicely shaped short trees; if you walk closer you may notice that every tree has a little photograph attached to it.

That picture marks the place a partisan was hanged and like a little scar on someone beautiful, that’s what grabs my attention every time I walk there.

Not the covered wooden pontoon bridge, designed by Palladio, not the upper Castle or the Cathedral. Not the church of St. Francis, with a 14th century Crucifix

by Guariento and remains of contemporary frescoes.

I’ve heard this story numerous times, told by my grandfather: the fascists came and gathered all the people from factories and schools and houses too.

Everybody was forced to watch while the partisans were hanged on those short trees.

But alas! A Fascist’s son was killed as well, because he was taking a crap behind a bush and was shot, after a soldier saw the leaves move.

And if you look at the pictures from that day you can see the partisans’ feet almost touching the ground.

And when I was little I always hoped I’d grow tall, so that -just in case- I would have had more chances of surviving.

I started to develop the idea that life and death are just a matter of inches and I really don’t think that’s too far from truth.

When my granddad told me the story, it always ended up with him telling me, teary eyed, how he would go back home and vomit and then vomit some more, like he was trying to expel evil from his organism.

He’s dead, now, like almost everyone else who was there that day, and people are starting to forget.

Memory wearing thin because it’s something that doesn’t belong to us in first person. It wasn’t my stomach who turned inside out after witnessing people my age being assassinated. My eyes were yet to come to this world. All I have is a story narrated over and over again that I won’t hear anymore.

And the stories are starting to change, now, they are made less threatening, sometimes even suggesting that those guys probably deserved to be killed.

Yet the pictures are still there, people hanging like weird fruit, feet suspended one inch from the ground, not tall enough and photography is what I resort to, when I feel I’m starting to forget.

shooting for Liviorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;sWhite Valentine collection model Elena Stival | styling DaMa

people

ElenaCucci Italo-French actress Elena Cucci began her career in 2005 with a small role in the TV series â&#x20AC;&#x153;Provaci ancora Prof â&#x20AC;?, directed by Rossella Izzo (RaiUno).

Since then, she has been working for TV series, movie projects and stage plays.

The first time I saw her face was when she was still just a model and I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a photographer yet, but was starting to take pictures as a hobby.

I was looking through some photos by Eolo Perfido and fell in love with her big brown eyes, her beautiful features and her amazing ability to tell a story through her gaze.

I told myself that one day I would have taken pictures of someone as beautiful as her.

It was one of those things you say to yourself while thinking it's just not going to happen, like "one day I'll be rich" or "I'll tour the world in an hot air balloon".

Less than a year later there she was again, on the cover of my first published article, for Digital Camera Magazine, something that made me a little extra happy about the whole thing.

In a time of my life when I was interested in the photographer rather than the person in front of the lens, for some reason hers was a name I remembered.

When we got in touch through a common friend and she told me she would have loved to work with me, I admit giggling like a schoolgirl on a date.

I have this theory that you should actually never meet people you admire, because it's likely you'll be extremely disappointed and I was a little nervous about her travelling from Rome to be in my supersmall studio.

The truth is it took me about 5 seconds to fall for her completely: she was carrying the hugest suitcase and when I tried to help her she just ignored me and told me "oh no, don't: it's heavy" and then proceeded to lift it on her own and place it in my trunk.

In my studio I was going to get a proper seat, since the only chair available was covered in stuff and when I turned around she was just sitting cossed-legged on the floor and graciously chatting with my assistant.

Not the kind of attitude you'd expect from someone "famous" (even though I must say that over time I have come to the conclusion that fame has little to do with people's behaviour: those doing what they do out of passion and working hard to become better and better always seem to be amazing people).

We had great fun shooting little videos while drinking tea and chatting as if we had known each other for years.

Working with her made me realize that photographing actors might be the thing I like the most under the sun: they are never holding back in front of the camera. I was filming Elena and I had this idea in mind of her laughing and then reacting to something someone might tell her and then starting to cry: the kind of direction for which most people would have looked at me with at least a raised eyebrow.

It took her about a minute to go from the most open, genuine, warm smile ever to what looked like real tears of misery, to the point where it became almost painful for me to watch.

Working with someone who is able to impersonate a character to create a whole narration behind a single image can really make the whole difference in the world.

travel

HOTEL ELDA Eco Ambient Hotel Eldaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history started in 1949 when grandma Elda thought to open a bar in what used to be their family home, almost a must considering the house had become the gathering place for the local young people, even from out of town, who would gather round the fire in the great kitchen in the evening to drink great-grandfather Albinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wine. The following year, encouraged by the barâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s success, grandma Elda decided to go a step further and open a trattoria in another wing of the house, its furniture built by the local carpenter. She would serve simple and authentic dishes, directly served by recipes passed on from mother to daughter. She managed everything herself, cooking and serving at tables, as well as cleaning up.

In 2010 hotel Elda preserves this tradition made of hospitality and small rituals, though remaining contemporary and environmentally friendly.

“It all started more than three years ago, when we realised a complete renovation was in order”, the owner recalls.

“As we sat around a table, papers in hand, we saw how much a small hotel such as ours was consuming and therefore polluting. We decided it was our duty to do all we could to create a building that was as eco-compatible as possible”.

Thus begun the first inkling of what would later become the eco ambient hotel. It was borne out of a profound respect for the surrounding nature, and from the conviction that nature is our greatest asset, which we need to value and hand over as intact as possible to future generations, like a precious gift.

We used everything technology can offer for energy saving to create a building that would be as close to zero impact as possible.

We use natural and highly insulating materials (very thick wood, low emission glass) and biomass boilers to supply heating, for example.

We decided to use a lot of wood for furniture and floors, all dutifully FSC certified.

We have floor heating, which assures greater living comfort but also works at much lower temperatures than your usual heating and so helps further towards energy saving.

We chose interior lighting with energy saving light bulbs and LEDs (wherever possible), and LED exterior lighting to reduce light pollution.

Two huge rainwater tanks collect rainwater, which is then used either for the garden, the dishwasher or the washing machine. And instead of using the typical chloride system for the pool’s water depuration, we have implemented a salt system, which will later be replaced with an ozone-based one. Projects for the next few years include the installation of solar photovoltaic panels for hot water and electric power (at least 15 kw).

Our paper literature (brochures, business cards, menus, etc.) is all made with recycled paper and other materials. For products used in the kitchen we prefer local produce, possibly from local

farmers to avoid needless road transportation.

And Eco Ambient Hotel Elda’s kitchen is definitely one of this hotel’s strong points: a cuisine of old memory, made up of local traditional dishes but also and especially dishes that belong to the family’s history, passed on from generation to generation, hand written in yellowing book pages.

Forgotten flavours, revisited and offered renewed using first quality products, with preference to organic produce farmed by in little plots in the area.

Eco Ambient Hotel Elda is in Lenzumo di Concei, in the Concei Valley, a little side-valley to the Ledro Valley. Nature is the true proprietor of this small valley, with its unpolluted fields and woods, clean air and starry skies, and this is the nature Eco Ambient Hotel needs to relate to, while fitting with the pre-existing historical fabric.

sara lando | 113

Summer Light

model Elena Bittante | styling Elena bittante and Sara Lando

design

NADIR Old motherforms find new life in Carla Riccoboniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work between tradition and innovation

A new chapter begins in the Jewellery design of Carla Riccoboni Her interest for signs, rhythms and markings that emerge from the preceding collections (ALPHABET, VENEZIA, NUVOLE, NUDO), are deepened and amplified.

Symbols and patterns are pressed into precious metals using the motherforms, obsolete tools from the recent past, salvaged in 2006 from the closing of the firm “Angelo Tovo”, who furnished the stamps and dies to the most important gold producing companies in the province.

Nearly 2500 mother-forms, or ‘creatori’ were saved from certain destruction thanks to the interest of Nadir Stringa, an impassioned collector of tools, utensils, and instruments originating from the culture and practices, of peasants and traditional craftsmanship.

This rich collection represents not only a nearly complete testimony to the last 50 years of history of Vicentine gold production, but also an exceptional repertory of symbols, elaborated and re-elaborated for international clients: an exciting and invaluable stimulus for experimenting with new use applications in contemporary expressions.

Carla Riccoboni has studied and analysed a few of these form-themes: SUN, RAYS, WHEEL, FLOWER, FRAMES, and developed a collection of jewellery, called NADIR 1.

These unique pieces and small series open the door to other possible development. This operation in “industrial archaeology” deriving from the history of the Vicentine District, realizes a few of the expressive possibilities of the forms inviting a new reading of the traces of the past in order to design the future with greater knowledge .

AD client | Self

Caught

Dream

in a

model Elena Cucci | styling Elena Cucci and Sara Lando assistants Federica Giacomazzi and Alessandro Locatelli

interview

A World Without

Gravity

by Giovanni Cervi

Some people seem to be subjected to a different law of gravity than the rest of humanity. The same cubic miles of polluted air that weigh upon us all do not squash them. They don’t look hunched by life. Their head contains simple mechanisms, the same as ours but gloriously simpler.

Perhaps we all used to be able to jump really high and see the world from hidden corners, like superheroes...

…Sara Lando has a superpower: she takes photographs. It used to be brukoworld.com, now it’s mooserental.com, but she still signs herself as bruko (katerpillar. With a k.). A legend told among surfers circulates in websites dedicated to masked crusaders and anybody possessing otherworldly powers, which has it that Sara sprinkles magic butterfly wing powder onto her own skin and on the masks and on any thing she photographs. From bruko to butterfly. The cycle of life completed with a camera and with a grace we cannot hope to equal.

How’s a day with photographs? And one without?

My sense of time isn’t especially precise and since House MD ended I have trouble remembering what day of the week it is.

On a typical day I’ll get up, go to work, come home, complain about the mess I’ve left behind, do nothing to fix it and go to bed.

Between one thing and the other I fight baddies and save the world, but usually on a day without pictures I feel like I’ve just wasted time.

When I take pictures it’s different. It’s as though time expands and fills up. And I fall asleep more easily.

You play a lot with your body and with your image… have you reached a level of maturity and confidence that allows you to do what you want?

Photography is part of what enabled me to come to terms the image I have of myself. I am still not particularly pleased with it, but I have learnt what I can and cannot do, it has become an efficient tool. I learnt which angles to avoid and which to favour and I learnt to exploit this knowledge to take the pictures I wanted: it is a lot easier than having to explain to someone else how they should shift because they look terrible from that angle. Self-portrait in particular allows you to not concern yourself with the limits of the person you are photographing. If I want a picture of some woman all covered in tar and feathers I only have to find the tar and

the feathers, without constantly wondering whether that person is embarrassed, if she’s had enough, if I can even ask her to lift her arms up without her telling me to go to hell. In particular, compared to a few years ago, I stopped concerning myself with the pictures I look good in rather than just the good pictures.

There seem to be 3 main directions in your imagination: masks, skin and manipulation… do they meet? Do they integrate? Are they parallel?

Can you explain them all to me?

All three themes came out of contingent necessities, which then turned into real passions. When I first started taking pictures I was using a Digital Mavica FD88 Floppy Disk Camera with a 1.3 megapixel resolution. I didn’t have a black background so I would use t-shirts, jumpers and skirts hanging on the wall. I would then correct the blacks with Photoshop to smooth them out.

Manipulation was initially the only way to overcome the camera and the equipment’s technical limitations, then little by little it became as much of a way to communicate as the photography itself. I don’t care how I achieve the image I have in my head. If I knew how to use 3D modelling or painting convincingly I would integrate either into image construction. Because I am especially lazy, I like obtaining what I have in mind with the least possible energy expense and manipulation allows me to do it (although not as often

sara lando | 140

painting convincingly I would integrate either into image construction. Because I am especially lazy, I like obtaining what I have in mind with the least possible energy expense and manipulation allows me to do it (although not as often and well as I would like).

Skin is the obligatory choice when you don’t have the right clothes available. The same garment seen in 10 different pictures taken at different times is boring. Skin never bores me. When I have to photograph someone, one of the first things I get asked is: “What clothes should I bring?”. My answer is always: “Something your kids won’t take the piss out of twenty years from now”. Unless you are taking a picture of the garment or using that cloth to get a particular effect, an item of clothing will rarely be more photogenic than skin.

And even then, you’ll always be concerned that in a couple of years’ time you’ll look at that picture and think: “Oh, it’s SO 2005!!!!”

I was a teenager in the Eighties: we used shoulder pads and high waist trousers that were tight at the bottom. And we liked them. It is clear that any person’s taste concerning any item of clothing can be dictated by a form of temporary mental insanity.

Our masks are a form of protection, a fun game and a way to be various characters within a single person. They amused me ever since I was a child, but they became a passion when I realised that a mask (especially a neutral mask) is an interesting way to stop taking pictures of a person in particular and start shifting attention onto the forms or the lighting. The next step was to realise that different masks have different personalities and so I find myself with a number of models who were all conveniently stored inside a suitcase, ready to be taken out when I please.

Has anybody ever recognised you on the street?

At the wine shop? At the supermarket? What does it feel like?

Through some sort of karma rule, it always happens when I’m right in the middle of an awful day, like when I have a fever of 102 or I’ve just finished arguing fiercely with someone and I am hiding in a toilet crying my eyes out. Since I am short-sighted but don’t often wear glasses, having the feeling I don’t recognise someone who is calling me by name is not particularly unusual. But, when I realise the person standing in front of me “knows” me from the Internet it is always a little surreal, but everyone’s always been really nice. I’m a little uncomfortable when someone sends me an email telling me that on that evening on that day when I was in that place they were sitting two tables away from me. It’s strange because it gives you a feeling of being stalked, I’d rather people introduced themselves. It used to happen far more often when I had a blog in Italian: since I shut it down the level of surreality in my life has decreased sensibly.

Photographers normally don’t like to manipulate

their pictures or their own image... what led you to do it?

Mainly necessity, since when I started taking pictures I had very limited means. It’s also a form of personal aesthetics.

Manipulation (with photo retouching, like in the dark room when I used to print from film) is the only way I have to really get the image I want. Whether it’s just correcting the levels of an image or putting different shots together to make substantial modifications, I work on them until the image is complete. It’s the same difference there is between cooking a dish and eating it standing up and straight out of the pan, or serving it on a laid out table.

Did you ever drown a camera?

No, but I dropped my coolpix in the sand last summer. Every time I turned it on it made a heartbreaking sand noise in the mechanism and for a while I only took seventies-style expired film pictures.

Does love influence imagination?

your

photographic

Love influences my lucidity and my mood and so it obviously ends up pouring into what I do, not just the photography, which is in any case a waste product of my state of mind. I believe that in a relationship (in a decent one at least) partners influence each other constantly. When you are with someone you imperceptibly start changing the way you approach things, the way you look at them. The fact that Alessandro and I spend a lot of time photographing together or carry parallel projects forward also means that his vision necessarily becomes part of the end product, which is a mixture of my ideas and methods with his.

How often have your pictures been seen online?

How does it feel?

I don’t have a counter on my website and so I don’t even have a rough idea. Sometimes people write to me who’ve seen one of my pictures somewhere with a link to my website and so many visitors arrive from places I didn’t even know about.

The Internet potentially allows you to show your work to anybody with access to it, although currently the community of those who surf beyond the “I’ll check my webmail – I want to see the latest GQ calendar pics – I’ll go on the forum and look for some pussy” level isn’t that wide, so you might end up bumping into the same nicknames in very different contexts.

The best thing about it is being able to interact directly with people, without knowing who lies behind a nick. So I’ve ended up exchanging a few very interesting emails regarding the history of photography with a sixty-year-old gentleman who is a farmer in Ohio or telling someone to fuck off for his annoyingly familiar tone only to find it was my brother who’d forgotten to sign his name. Occasionally someone will write to me and ask permission to download a picture to use it as the cover of a burned cd or to print and have at home. The

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and well as I would like).

Skin is the obligatory choice when you don’t have the right clothes available. The same garment seen in 10 different pictures taken at different times is boring. Skin never bores me. When I have to photograph someone, one of the first things I get asked is: “What clothes should I bring?”. My answer is always: “Something your kids won’t take the piss out of twenty years from now”. Unless you are taking a picture of the garment or using that cloth to get a particular effect, an item of clothing will rarely be more photogenic than skin.

And even then, you’ll always be concerned that in a couple of years’ time you’ll look at that picture and think: “Oh, it’s SO 2005!!!!”

I was a teenager in the Eighties: we used shoulder pads and high waist trousers that were tight at the bottom. And we liked them. It is clear that any person’s taste concerning any item of clothing can be dictated by a form of temporary mental insanity.

Our masks are a form of protection, a fun game and a way to be various characters within a single person. They amused me ever since I was a child, but they became a passion when I realised that a mask (especially a neutral mask) is an interesting way to stop taking pictures of a person in particular and start shifting attention onto the forms or the lighting. The next step was to realise that different masks have different personalities and so I find myself with a number of models who were all conveniently stored inside a suitcase, ready to be taken out when I please.

levels of an image or putting different shots together to make substantial modifications, I work on them until the image is complete. It’s the same difference there is between cooking a dish and eating it standing up and straight out of the pan, or serving it on a laid out table.

Has anybody ever recognised you on the street?

At the wine shop? At the supermarket? What does it feel like?

I don’t have a counter on my website and so I don’t even have a rough idea. Sometimes people write to me who’ve seen one of my pictures somewhere with a link to my website and so many visitors arrive from places I didn’t even know about.

The Internet potentially allows you to show your work to anybody with access to it, although currently the community of those who surf beyond the “I’ll check my webmail – I want to see the latest GQ calendar pics – I’ll go on the forum and look for some pussy” level isn’t that wide, so you might end up bumping into the same nicknames in very different contexts.

The best thing about it is being able to interact directly with people, without knowing who lies behind a nick. So I’ve ended up exchanging a few very interesting emails regarding the history of photography with a sixty-year-old gentleman who is a farmer in Ohio or telling someone to fuck off for his annoyingly familiar tone only to find it was my brother who’d forgotten to sign his name. Occasionally someone will write to me and ask permission to download a picture to use it as the cover of a burned cd or to print and have at home. The idea that someone might find something I did good enough to also want it outside the monitor gives me a good feeling.

Through some sort of karma rule, it always happens when I’m right in the middle of an awful day, like when I have a fever of 102 or I’ve just finished arguing fiercely with someone and I am hiding in a toilet crying my eyes out. Since I am short-sighted but don’t often wear glasses, having the feeling I don’t recognise someone who is calling me by name is not particularly unusual. But, when I realise the person standing in front of me “knows” me from the Internet it is always a little surreal, but everyone’s always been really nice. I’m a little uncomfortable when someone sends me an email telling me that on that evening on that day when I was in that place they were sitting two tables away from me. It’s strange because it gives you a feeling of being stalked, I’d rather people introduced themselves. It used to happen far more often when I had a blog in Italian: since I shut it down the level of surreality in my life has decreased sensibly.

Photographers normally don’t like to manipulate their pictures or their own image... what led you to do it?

Mainly necessity, since when I started taking pictures I had very limited means. It’s also a form of personal aesthetics.

Manipulation (with photo retouching, like in the dark room when I used to print from film) is the only way I have to really get the image I want. Whether it’s just correcting the

Did you ever drown a camera?

No, but I dropped my coolpix in the sand last summer. Every time I turned it on it made a heartbreaking sand noise in the mechanism and for a while I only took seventies-style expired film pictures.

Does love influence imagination?

your

photographic

Love influences my lucidity and my mood and so it obviously ends up pouring into what I do, not just the photography, which is in any case a waste product of my state of mind. I believe that in a relationship (in a decent one at least) partners influence each other constantly. When you are with someone you imperceptibly start changing the way you approach things, the way you look at them. The fact that Alessandro and I spend a lot of time photographing together or carry parallel projects forward also means that his vision necessarily becomes part of the end product, which is a mixture of my ideas and methods with his.

How often have your pictures been seen online?

How does it feel?

The most delirious email you ever received?

Hard to choose.

The freaks that write to me can be pretty much divided into 4 large groups: 1) Those who write emails with loads of difficult words, telling me about the main semiotic characteristics of my work and about how they interact with their sensory organs further

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to neuronal short circuits which elevate the said organs to a moderate state of swelling.

2) Those who write to me in a language I don’t know (usually Portuguese or Russian) assuming my team of translators will pass on the message, or they write to me in a language they don’t know (English) despite being Italian, because they assume the only reason why anybody would have a website in English is because they don’t speak Italian at all and so they are being helpful.

3) Those who put forward various artistic collaborations that entail taking pictures of each other’s naked body parts and exchanging them via email.

4) Those who are sure they’ve had the stroke of genius to impress me by insulting me and then give me their phone number in their second email.

I generally do not reply to the first, I adore the second (I have a delirious complete exchange in Portuguese using babelfish), I laugh at the third and am not particularly impressed by the last.

Considering your experience…what do you think of the web? And all the pornography available on it?

What initially fascinated me about the Internet was being able to find a virtually endless supply of information, and if you couldn’t find it on a website you could probably get someone’s help in a forum. And it was always truly knowledgeable people. Or perhaps I have just been very lucky.

I can’t remember whether there was all this dread and anxiety in protecting one’s own little garden as there is now. Since anybody can have a website and take part in a forum because the basic knowledge to do it has increased (or rather, because the necessary basic knowledge has decreased a lot), anybody does it. The background noise of people who have proclaimed themselves some sort of holier-than-thou guru and spend their time insulting everyone else, hoping the chaos they’ve raised will cover up their failings as people, has increased. We hide behind ten different nicknames, until we end up as two identical characters who share all the same sad characteristics as the people behind them.

There are, however, also very valid people, and the best thing about the web is the chance to interact with them directly, to work together irrespective of physical distance. As far as pornography is concerned, I have always found it quite amusing. As long as it’s things done by consensual adults, I really don’t see how it can be considered some sort of plague for the society. I am much more easily disturbed by a theft of intimacy: seeing someone die or a private pain thrown about all over the place for the sake of reporting. Seeing two people making a show of sex in front of a camera, aware of who will be watching them is sometimes aesthetically pleasant, sometimes grotesque and sometimes comical, but I don’t find it scandalous. I cannot appreciate the subtleties of so-called perversions, the idea of getting tied up like a sausage while

an idiot in a latex suit spanks me with a peacock-feathers whip seems to me less erotically arousing that cleaning out my rabbits’ cage.

Do you listen to advice?

Yes, but I give it more or less weight depending on who is giving it to me. There are people whom I trust and that I respect immensely and their advice definitely carries more weight than the advice I might get from a stranger. Unless this stranger’s quality of work is such that he or she immediately gains authority in my eyes.

I always took advice for what it is: remarks designed to make you consider something. But that doesn’t mean it has to be followed.

What matters in virtual life? And in the real one?

In virtual life you must first and foremost remember that even though the Internet can sometimes give you the impression of something comfortable and private, everything you show or write there will be exposed to public derision.

Posting personal information, insults about your ex-boyfriend or the scan of your tits because “who’s going to find out anyway” is basically stupid. In real life what matters is to be consistent with what you believe is right and the support of your tribe (that network of relatives and proper friends that carry on being friends even when you switch everything off ).

ghettophotography

mud

forget high budget photography: all you need is a chair, two white towels, a couple of books and a wall.

Sometimes we spend so much energy learning how to use our expensive lighting gear, we start to think we can only take pictures with the proper lights/ with a decent tripod/ with pocket wizards/ with complicated setups.

When I started I didn’t have all of the above and taking pictures was mostly a matter of tricking my faulty camera into doing what I wanted it to do, using what I had available at the time.

And so, after I had avoided taking a photograph I had in mind for the umpteenth time, just because the conditions weren’t optimal, I decided it was time to set things right.

It was Sunday morning, I was hanging out at home and all of my gear was in the studio.

I looked outside and the sky was overcast and grey: awesome! God’s softbox was already in place!

I always carry my Canon 40D in my purse: it’s my backup camera and always having it with me has been proven useful over and over again. Like Chase Jarvis says: the best camera is the one you have with you.

Still, my balcony isn’t the most photogenic place in the world. An uncluttered piece of concrete wall, tough, is perfect if you plan on using a wide

aperture, placing it out of focus.

Not having a tripod at home wasn’t a real problem: every flat surface is a potential tripod and the only issue is placing the camera at the correct height (easy enough with a little help from Dan Margulis’ colour correction books).

The final touch was using white towels as reflectors, to lighten up the shadows.

Learning to find a way to take your picture anyway teaches you to think on your feet: as a photographer, what I do is mostly solve problems.

Clients or art directors have an idea and no matter what, I need to make it come to life.

Murphy’s law seems to be the most important rule to remember, way more important than inverse square law, or the rule of thirds.

I guess I feel closer to MacGyver than Ansel Adams.

Left: picture of the setup. I didn’t have another camera and my 50mm lens wouldn’t have pictured the whole scene, so I duct taped my iphone to the wall after setting the self timer.

self

geometry lessons for flying seeds For me growing and escaping have been synonyms for a long, long time.

Trying not to put down roots, not too bind to a place or a person, looking at where you are going rather than focusing on where you’re coming from.

Then one November afternoon I watched the birds migrate over the dock of Milan and I realized that as much as I tried to be part of a city made of concrete, this was not my home.

I started taking pictures to remember that feeling and as soon as I arrived home I started to work on this little series: the images are pasted on the book that my father used when he was attending 6th grade, “Geometria per le scuole medie inferiori per la prima classe” by Luigi Pongiglione.

Why I would carry with me a 50-year-old geometry book that wasn’t even mine is one of those things I’ll never be able to fully explain.

These pictures were published in Aria Magazine, issue 5.

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Contacts Sara Lando

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