Open Mic. A conversation with Filippo Romano

Open Mic A conversation with Filippo Romano Aparna Avasarala Zachary Butler Adam DeChant Hayden Erdman Justin Gleason Paul Hazelet Taylor Inzetta Michael Kekedy Ashley Kerwood Kara Konieczny Kaycee Lowengrub Kurt Nelson Alex Petruso Jonathan Rankin David Sidick Zachary Skwara Michael Sweterlitsch Justin Wharrey Alexander Wills Brendan Wolfe

Made by students enrolled in the “Video, Media, and Architecture� class taught by professor Marco Brizzi at Kent State University in Florence in Spring 2015.

Contents 4 Biography 6 Interview

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Biography

Filippo Romano is a documentary and architecture photographer who studied documentary photography at the International Center of Photography (I.C.P.) in New York. Over time, Romano has developed a strong interest in cities and urban dwellers. This subject is displayed in his many works which can be seen in the books published by Skira or in magazines such as Abitare, Dwell, Domus, lo Donna, and Courrier International. In 2007, he won the Pesaresi/ Contrasto grant with the project “OFF CHINA” and has taken part in many exhibitions including: the International Photo Festival of Rome, Biennale of Architecture in Venice, and “Sao Paulo Calling” exhibition. Today, he is a member of the Agency Luzphoto and has written a book called “Soleri Town” which focuses on his view of Utopian Architecture.

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OPEN MIC

INTERVIEW WITH

Filippo Romano FLORENCE 2015

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Video, Media and Architecture What goes into taking a picture from the moment you capture it to the moment you release it on your website as a finished project?

The first step is just a very intense and strong curiosity about recording reality, about experiencing reality and gathering something that can remain from my experience. The final step, what you call the publishing, is the fact that this experience that starts to be personal is now an experience that I want to share with people. In a way that expresses what I wanted to do from the beginning with the action of taking the picture. As you know, everybody can read my photos as they want. This is for me the most interesting aspect of putting a picture on a website.

VMA - Today’s influence of technology makes it extremely easy to share photos worldwide.

What is your opinion of social media (Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr) as a professional photographer?

First of all, I have to admit that I am very slow in terms of pushing my work in social media. It’s not for moral reasons, though. It’s just that I simply want to find my own way to build my connections and build my way of being seen and understood as a photographer. I am

absolutely positive about the idea of sharing pictures and using the media. I don’t think everything should be shared, it is about personal freedom, but I think it’s absolutely a good point that Facebook and other social media exist because I know what it was like when they did not exist. I’m 46 and it was tremendously more difficult to develop and to be visible as a photographer. I put my pictures on Facebook, and I will start soon to put them on Tumblr. I have been studying the media, and the reason I am not on Tumblr yet is because I am going to be there very soon... I took this time to find my own way of communicating, and now I feel comfortable so I will start. In general terms, I am not against social media at all. I mean... It’s not the media, it’s the way people use them. If you have a beautiful house you can respect the house and maintain it in a magnificent way or you can trash everything. It’s not about the house; it’s about your habit. It’s the same with the use of social media. It’s a very individual thing, people use it in a bad way or a good way.

VMA - Would you say you spend more time in the field actually taking the photos or editing them?

It’s two different steps, there is a different way of thinking. I love to edit pictures, it reminds me a lot of printing the pictures when i was working in the dark room.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH FILIPPO ROMANO

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“I love to edit pictures, it reminds me a lot of printing the pictures when I was working in the dark room.”

This special moment of going back to the experience and looking at it to learn more, to understand more and to try to clean the image itself or clean your mind in terms of the things you want to say. Editing is about collecting the work in order to come out with a story.

I take pictures everyday more or less, I use film and I use my cell phone. Somehow photography is not about coming out with a straight story, sometimes it’s the pleasure of playing an instrument. And I don’t mean it in a selfish way. Reality is interesting and you want to record something about it. It’s also a visual exercise.

That’s why I mentioned music... because to be a good musician you need to play everyday.

OPEN MIC

AN INTERVIEW WITH FILIPPO ROMANO

“You want to react to life and to record things, and that’s the way I work, it’s in between.”

VMA - What do you typically take with you to a shoot? And are there any items in particular you use when making architectural photographs?

It depends on the kind of work I have to do. I have a Canon and a Nikon camera. They are not the best cameras, but they give me enough quality as a professional photographer to survive when I shoot. I always carry a small camera with film, and recently my phone is a Lumia. I also carry another small camera that is very cheap but it makes fantastic pictures. I use it to keep a diary in between my work. I think these are the pictures that will go on my Tumblr. I have been keeping a photo diary even before the “digital” era, when I was using film and printing the pictures myself, in the dark room. You want to react to life and to record things. I might become another person or change profession but I will always keep this sort of confidential use of photography. Like a endless diary about my life.

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VMA - How do you bring life to architecture? Do you feel that it is the architect’s job to create interesting buildings, or do you feel that by creating interesting photos you can bring movement and energy to the architecture?

I definitely focus on people as they use the space. I like to observe and record how people use, share, enter, or leave a well designed space. I am also interested in the way the architecture belongs to the city or to the surrounding environment. I consider the city or the urban landscape as an alive element, similar to nature. It doesn’t move, it’s true. But it breathes, changes and exists slowly.

OPEN MIC

architect writes about the project or what other people have been writing about the architecture. Sometimes I absorb the information but then I crush everything and I rebuild all around. Sometimes I go visit the site by myself, so I can personally experience, with no bias, the critical points of the architecture.

If critics have been talking about some specific aspect of a building, I’ll go and check them out in persone. And not necessarily to give an answer to their opinions, but to leave things open. This is the way I prefer to work.

VMA - When taking a portrait photo, how do you select which architectural element will best VMA - What is the process when compliment the personality working with the architect to captured in the image? figure out the best photo to capture I think it’s complicated but I guess a the concept or the personality of good example is the portrait I took of the building?

Paolo Soleri. Because he didn’t want It’s about listening, studying, reading to be photographed so I really acted and understanding what the designer like a paparazzo. I just crushed the was thinking of his own work. I don’t rules of political correctness in a way just shoot randomly. I always try to because I thought it was very important understand. I ask questions and I keep to photograph him. First of all I came an open mind, because sometimes if we from Italy to Arcosanti in Arizona to give statements we kill everything, we experience the place. I absolutely wanted kill our experience. My work is about a picture of him because he was such a coming back, returning to places. And charismatic person! His gestures were I think 90% of my work is not finished. so strong and so intense. But he just And it’s not because it is unfinished, per didn’t want to be photographed. Deep se. Also, I like to read about what the inside, though, I knew he liked to be

“It’s about listening, studying, reading and understanding what the designer was thinking of his own work. I don’t just shoot randomly I always try to understand, not to give answers on how to use the space.”

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photographed. Every architect has a strong narcissistic part. Arcosanti was, and is, an almost sacred space.

I found a specific moment to photograph him and take that picture. There was a narrow corridor that was coming up on this structure. I was hiding myself.

When he came out I jumped in front of him and I photographed him. Don’t forget, there is also a lot of good luck in getting a good picture. You try to put together the uncontrolled elements, but you have to be lucky. and that’s the beauty of taking pictures.

OPEN MIC

AN INTERVIEW WITH FILIPPO ROMANO

VMA - Many of your photographs are a mix of candids and posed. Would you say you prefer a candid shot or a posed shot to tell the story of your subject?

I like both. I think when I was younger I thought candid was the best, but getting older I start to understand that many things are uncontrolled but they are more subtle and more in between. In my experience I have seen so many photojournalists that fake this idea of being candid, they just move around the people and tell them to not look into the camera. I have a specific story about that. It was after the Haiti earthquake I was

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“...for me photography is not working on the evidence, but unbalance the evidence. trying to find something else.�

on assignment for the magazine Abitare which is an architectural magazine based in Milan. The director asked me to go and try to describe a destroyed city. The idea was to find a different scape than the photojournalist’s. Everything is there, in your face; but you have to be intimate and expressive at the same time. People were desperate from the earthquake.

At a certain point there was a fantastic light above a completely destroyed environment. There was a building, a market hall desinged by the French, that was falling into pieces. There was a fire, and a homeless child with a cross on his breast. He was walking around and he was the stereotypical image that all the photojournalists were looking for.

Immediately within 30 minutes of being there I see the best photojournalists in the world jumping on this child, photographing him. He was like a model.

I photographed this situation and later I saw an Italian photographer who won the world press photo with the photo of this little boy. He turned the image to black and white and it made it look like an apocalypse. This child was so aware that he was being photographed. But in that specific frame he was not looking into the camera. Well... for me photography is not working on the evidence, but unbalance the evidence. I want to try to find something else.

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“... it was the moment I decided to be who I am, to find my own position...”

VMA - Some of your works capture movement. Why is movement in a picture important to you?

It really depends on what I want to say.

Sometimes it helps me to give a feeling of movement and energy or help me to give a sense of crowd or noise.

to be who I am, to find my own position and face certain kinds of situations.

I don’t like to get to the “news style” photography. I probably am a city teller, someone who tells stories about cities.

And I want to improve in this sense, and become more sophisticated.

VMA - As a photographer, do you feel like you always have creative freedom? Do jobs you are hired for ever seem to limit that freedom?

No, absolutely not. Lot’s of work that I love is done under assignment. I have lots of freedom. I am especially grateful to the then director of Abitare magazine who sent me to Haiti. I thanked him a lot because it was the moment I decided

VMA - Do you notice a difference in how you take photographs for different sources? Do you handle photographs for magazine, online publication, books, and exhibitions differently? How so?

Yes, definitely. There is not full coherence in my entire body of work. But there is coherence within every project. The fact that there are different “styles” for

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different media helps me to understand and to improve and to experiment with the language, which is a very important point for me. I will never be like anyone who finds his own way and he always takes his pictures with the same style and scale. I really want to experiment with the language [of photography]. I want to capture different experiences of reality. The fact that I have a limit of the assignment helps me a lot to push more in that direction. I have to respond to someone who is committing to a project and is calling me to do that, and I like to respond in a good way.

OPEN MIC

“I really want to experiment with the language [of photography]. I want to capture different experiences of reality..”

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AN INTERVIEW WITH FILIPPO ROMANO

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VMA - Do you have specific criteria for framing an architectural photograph?

No, I think it depends on what I need to photograph. It really depends on the situation. Very frequently, I try to keep the lines straight, but I don’t think it should be a rule. Some take it as a rule. It’s a cliche of architectural photography that it needs to be recognized as architectural photography.

Many people don’t understand what I’m doing, but when they see that I take pictures with straight lines of a building, they think “okay, you’re an architectural photographer.” All the rest they don’t know. So I keep it, I need to market myself. But if I really want to talk about visual reality, well... then it is not about getting straight lines. I’m thinking about a photographer, David Hockney, who was shooting fantastic swimming pools. He was composing a space, and was getting there with some ideas related to Picasso and to Cubism.

Everything was really about space and architecture. It was not about straight lines. It was more experimental. Too experimental for project photography that needs to be in this case and probably my case [literal] to understand. But I also really like David Hockney. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his work. He’s from the 1970s, and his work reads like a diary. It’s really interesting because

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he’s not a photographer in the straight sense, but he’s a visual artist. The way he frames things and the way he composes the experience of reality is very fresh.

I go back to him and get new ideas. He published a beautiful anthology of his photographic work, and if you get a chance, I strongly suggest you to give it a look.

VMA - How do you decide when to use videos or photographs to capture a project?

I try to do both, whenever possible.

Because I think that photos and a video bring more information together, and a different scale of reading, so I can give a fuller and more complex idea of my experience. If you look at my website, you can see that I’m working since 2011 on Nairobi. I started first with a survey of a ghetto and now I’m working on the entire city. I did a first video, and I hope to do a second and a third one. It is important to me to do also a video because it helps me to explain what I observe. The beauty of the video sometimes is that it gives fresh explanations about a place. Still images are more enigmatic. They don’t give you a straight answer, they suggest you an idea.

OPEN MIC

images again and I see images that make sense and other images that make less sense. That is the moment. Or sometimes, it’s just the deadline that pushes me to close down the project.

VMA - Do you typically collaborate with the architect of the building you’re going to photograph. Or is mostly you making decisions on your own?

The architectural work definitely entails a collaboration with the architects or with the architectural historians. I like to work with architectural historians, because they are more free sometimes and more sophisticated in the way they approach the subject of architectural photography . Architects, on the other hand, sometimes think they know more about photography than they actually do. Some are interesting because they are open to experimentation, but others just want to emphasize their project.

But representing architecture is more complicated. It’s not about blue skies, or shiny surfaces. It’s about something else.

Some architects just want to be reassured and want photos of their projects to be taken on sunny days and with no people around.

VMA - You say that you consider VMA - How did you get into your photos 90% completed. How architectural photography? do you know when to stop editing?

A long time ago I started to study That moment is when I go over the

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architecture, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be an architect. At the beginning I enjoyed studying architecture because it helped me to understand the experience of the city. Then I understood I really liked photography and visual communication, so I decided to become a graphic designer. Also, I entered ISIA in Urbino, a school that specialized in arts and design. When I was sixteen I read “Introduction to Architecture” by Bruno Zevi because I had a very good teacher in high school. When I told him I might end up studying architecture, he gave me this book. I probably didn’t fully understand it at that age, but it definitely helped me to shape my personal experience of architecture.

OPEN MIC

“Somehow photography is not about coming out with a straight story, sometimes it’s the pleasure of playing an instrument. And I don’t mean it in a selfish way.

Reality is interesting and you want to record something about it.”

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This interview with Filippo Romano was focused upon his growth as a photographer, and his relationship with architecture. It was a collaborative effort among students of the Video, Media, and Architecture course at Kent State University Florence. Guest lecturers were brought in from all over Europe for a Spring lecture series and students were tasked to create an interview before each of these lectures. After analyzing numerous interviews with other architects, students researched and explored the work of the visiting lecturers. Questions were then devised by each student, and these questions were analyzed based upon their thematic similarity and their relevance to the work of each lecturer. The most appropriate questions were chosen for each interview, and the specific students who created these questions then were charged with interviewing our guests, using the chosen questions as a base and posing any other questions that flowed with the interview.