ROSALIA ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHER (part 1)

Black white analogic photography as introspection and artistic research

Thank you for your interest in the most intimate part of my photographic work. The story began 25 years ago in Ancona (Italy), in the 90s... when I discovered creative photography. After years of restlessness in search of my expressive medium in which I acted in the theater, played the piano, painted canvas, thanks to a group of passionate photographer friends I had the opportunity to meet an absolute master of the history of photography: Mario Giacomelli, who lived a few kilometers from my city. I was so fascinated by his personality and his unique way of creating images, that I decided to start my journey with photography. After several attempts I finally found the photographic film that gave the results I wanted with the development times I had tested, and I spent the nights in the darkroom printing my negatives. Photography requires continuous work, study and sacrifices, even economic ones. But it’s worth. Only photography gives me that adrenaline and pleasure that I don't want to live without.

It's already been 20 years since my first show! In fact, in 1999 my photographic installation was selected to be exhibited at the Fringe Festival inside the Leopolda Station in Florence. I thank my friend and artist Simone Pellegrini who motivated me to show my photographs and to continue my research. The selected work was the black and white self-portraits series entitled "Breve storia di una vita", which was then showed in other exhibitions and festivals, including the Toscana Foto Festival of Massa Marittima (2001) where it won the special jury prize, at the Italian Foundation of Photography in Turin in 2003, in the "Maionese Project" at En Plein Air Gallery in Pinerolo (TO), at the Mole Vanvitelliana in Ancona in 2003, at the Palazzo Novellucci in Prato in 2004, on the occasion of "Erotica 3 "In Ljublijana (Slovenia) in 2006, at the Palazzo del Duca in Senigallia in 2012 for " Il corpo solitario - l’autoscatto " by Giorgio Bonomi. It has been published in various catalogs and on Label Magazine.

The “self-portrait” has always accompanied me in the most solitary and difficult moments of my life, I feel the the following one with great sentimental value.

The following triptych entitled "Like a pigeon in a cage" fondly reminds me of a friend who died prematurely, the journalist and writer Corrado Sannucci, known during my solo show at the Mole Vanvitelliana in Ancona. Every time he called me he used to ask me in the nice Roman dialect: "How's the pigeon?"

From 2000 to 2005 I traveled to Libya, Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal, Turkey, Iceland, Syria, Thailand, Cambodia and I had the opportunity to participate in workshops, photo festivals and portfolio readings with some of the most important personalities in the photographic field, including Denis Curti, Antoine D'Agata, Christian Caujolle etc. Denis Curti (former artistic director of the Contrasto Agency of Milan and current artistic director of the Casa dei TRE OCI in Venice and director of the magazine FOTOGRAFO), was a very important figure in my artistic career, the one who recognize the " rough diamond ” in my portfolio of amateur photographer. In 2000 my most appreciated and exposed photographic work was born, entitled: "Movimenti Marginali", which collects photographs taken in 5 years of travels on the road around the world. The photographs of Movimenti Marginali are printed on baryta paper in limited edition of copies and are part of some private collections. They have been exhibited in various personal exhibitions including the Savignano sul Rubicone Festival (2003), the San Fedele Gallery in Milan (2004) curated by Denis Curti, the Joyce & Co. gallery in Genoa (2005), the Transphotographiques Festival of Lille (2005), at SOHO Photo Gallery in New York (2006), at ST Gallery in Rome and at the Phototriennale of Hamburg (2008). Some images have been published together with an article by Gigliola Foschi in the ZOOM magazine in the honor portfolio section (see the article). In 2006, on the occasion of my personal exhibition Soho Photo Gallery, I lived 3 months in New York, an adventurous and solitary experience that I will tell in another post.

These years have been very creative, I spent hours and nights in the dark room "painting" with my photography and experimenting with movement and with different techniques of development and printing. The series entitled "In a dream" (2003), were created with the overlapping of several negatives shot in the Sahara desert, so the result of each image is unrepeatable.

With the spread of digital and the elimination of some films from the market, including "my" KODAK TP, I experienced a few years of creative confusion, approx from 2005 to 2010. At the beginning I took digital pictures, I transformed the files into a black and white negatives and printed them in my dark room. For some years I was "kidnapped" by the reality in motion in the frame of the windows of cars, trains, subways ... that “movie” without an end of which I "cut out" some frames. The following image won a prize in the Caminos de Hierro photo contest - organized by the Fundaciòn de los Ferrocarriles Espanoles of Madrid and was exhibited in several traveling exhibitions in Spain.

With the images taken from the New York subway, I created a video together with the artist Mirco Tarsi, which was second in an important competition for a Swiss watch company. The video is in fact a "clock" by images.

p.s. The fine art prints of this article are available in numbered and limited edition on baryta paper and in a larger sizes digital version printed on fine-art paper. Write me for any information and to receive the news.