interview

O v e r e x p o s e d & U n d e r d e v e l o p e d

An Intervew with the Artist: Giovanni Lami

About Giovanni Lami:

I'm not a firing line photographer, I try to follow the tradition from Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans or Paul Strand, through American New Topographers (Rochester 1975), to nowadays Alec Soth, Richard Renaldi or Mark Power for example, a great interest in people and lands, and their connections. For my project I always use Large Format Cameras (8x10" or 4x5"), my photography is more introspective, with a more pondering attitude compared to many modern photo works.
I try to transcend standard photographic labels, in my pictures there's something private and intimate; everyone can compare them with his own background, there're always elements familiar and destabilizing at the same time. I like to speak with people I take pictures of, talking about them and their thoughts about the place they live in, that even for a short time only, I share with them.
Taking pictures is really the last step, albeit the most important.
I oppose wide and thoughtful time of large format cameras (with which I work since 2003) to the modern shooting, and I prefer reality impressed on films to digital manipulations; reality for sure, or even better: reality's idea. Results of my research are always objective, almost documentary on the surface.
Every time I join the shot's choice and the shutter's "click" to the sound (the silence) of my steps, my intent is not only looking, but walking also, because being inside places, reach and cross them, permits you taking both subterranean and exterior life's signals. And as you can see, my vision of cities (and of every place sure) is radically binary: on one side there're spaces, places, deserted buildings like in a "ghost town" or a "movie set"; on the other side instead there're faces, looks, human presences. It's a binocular vision, it lets the viewer make a personal sequence with an unfocused shape, based on his own life experience. Every face has inside the place's history rewritten today. Everyday places become surreal, memory's places and faces look real, clear but unknown, and looking into them, we are confused.
I try to delete the space between me and the space around, dramas are hanging on, tensions, tears and tragedies are moved away. "You and your camera are in there, you're part of that, both think at the same manner" - Paolo Costantini.
I'd like to put petty (on the surface) details on my pictures, trying to make them speak, hoping the viewers can find new points or different shudders in the photograph seeing it more than a time only, everyday life in a new light. But this is not emotional or romantic: it's only life's matter of fact, and I'm there to photograph that space, speaking the same language. I want to catch the silence, not evoking others -fake- images, but isolating it from the noise around, taking and patiently listening to it. I choose most reality's invisible part due to everyday speed.
There's something like an apnea while we see everyday life in a different dimension, like a big still life, we ask our self if we enter/inhabit the places, or the places live into us.
"where are we now?" maybe on the border of another place, of another look, however, no more on the outer side.

Si inaugura giovedi' 26 giugno alle ore 18 nella nuova sede dell'Autorita' Portuale di Ravenna in via Antivo Squero,
nella darsena di citta', la mostra ''La macchina del porto'' a cura di Sergio Saggi e Danilo Montanari,
fotografie di Giovanni Lami (catalogo Danilo Montanari Editore).

http://www.giovannilami.it/

Giovanni Lami

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1- D: quale è la tua prima immagine cui ti senti affezionato?

andando molto indietro negli anni certamente questa. ma davvero, era un'altra vita..
http://i25.tinypic.com/21b6flh.jpg
(emulsione liquida su foglio di acetato con base di colla spray)
in questo ultimo periodo direi senza dubbio questa
http://i25.tinypic.com/22hipv.jpg
la prima scattata in 8x10

2- D: quale è l'attuale foto che senti ti rappresenti di più?

http://i31.tinypic.com/e8v05i.jpg
e
http://i28.tinypic.com/25u16h5.jpg

3- D: cosa hai da mostrarmi oggi di bello?

http://i27.tinypic.com/xcow7p.jpg

4- D: cosa è la fotografia oggi per te?

questo:
http://i31.tinypic.com/k1748j.jpg
e tutto ciò che la scelta comporta.

5- D: creatività: il fine giustifica i mezzi?

http://i25.tinypic.com/259aejk.jpg

L'ultima parola all'autore riguardo a quanto sopra:

http://i28.tinypic.com/2z4z5w6.jpg
http://i26.tinypic.com/2gtotoh.jpg

fine

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