Interview about Talking Peppers Art Photography, winner of the A' Photography and Photo Manipulation Design Award 2021
Nus Nous photographs seem to represent human bodies or parts of them, in reality it is the observer who wants to see them. When we observe anything, even a situation, we observe it emotionally and for this reason, we often let ourselves be deceived. In the Nus Nous images, it is evident how the element of ambivalence turns into a subtle elaboration of the mind that takes us away from reality to lead us into an imaginary labyrinth made up of suggestions.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsThe technique was developed based on the results I obtained. The berries wereilluminated with normal photographic lamps but the light produced shadows that were toosharp and the shiny surface of the subjects gave annoying reflections and a lack ofdetail. The lamps, whose light sources, photographic halogen bulbs, wereshielded in order to have softer light beams as a result. In addition to the lights,I use white reflective panels and also black panels, which have the purpose, oncepositioned, to lighten or make the light fall on that point creating chiaroscuro.The very uniform lighting gives, in my opinion, little plasticity to the subjects, what is morepleasant is to create darker areas but with well-defined details. It was a techniquewidely used by old portraitists.Other improvements were necessary in the chemical development of the films.The developments are not all the same, these have been replaced until the one that gavethe most suitable results for the photographed subjects was found. I have obtained the best results with atwo-solution development, which keeps the highlights under control, giving prominence to thedetails and having a good result even in the shadows. This old development hasrecently been modified with more modern components and is easily found on themarket produced by several companies.The negative, 4x5 inch format of medium sensitivity is treated with the two-solutiondevelopment with modified development times until the optimal result is achieved.The great master E. Weston was very helpful to me, with his beautiful images ofonions, cabbages, shells and .........peppers. It was precisely these last ones that caused him manyproblems, so much so that he himself invented the famous ABC development, which is the one from which the modern two-solution developments derive. Weston's development, ABC, was,in reality, a three-solution development to be mixed together and diluted in water, the three solutionswere stored separately for better durability over time, the preparation of thedeveloper had to be used immediately due to its high perishability.
When the Nus-Nous project began, this was the name in the year 2000, I was notexactly aware of what I was doing. The Talking Peppers ArtPhotography project was forming during its journey, at the beginning it was born rather hazy,so much so that I thought of making about 30/40 works, enough for an exhibition; however,during the journey I was involved and I was stimulated to continue implementing theresearch with new works. The archive increased and the more it increased the more I was stimulated toimplement it further. An artistic project composed of 40/60 works is more thansufficient for any use. The number of works in the project is now at 1200negatives, some are very beautiful, others at a lower level, in my opinion but sincememories take over it happens that to an observer a photograph, for me not of the foregroundactivates some areas of his mind causing sensations that make the imageinteresting and in any case 1200 4x5 negatives for aphotography project is a huge number. There is no event where such ahigh number of works are presented, not even if it tells the whole artistic life of a genius.The fact is that I can't predict the closure of Talking Peppers Art Photography. Inany plot, everything resolved, they lived happily ever after, the end. The works that are bornforce me to continue searching. A pepper photographed from the front and back, above andbelow, that's it. In nude photographs when you have 8/10 photographs selected that's it,otherwise you run the risk of making duplicates and you have to stop. The Talking PeppersArt Photography project can’t stop, it always seems like something is missing, I can’tfind the final images, at least until now.
I started taking photographs in the early 70s, colour photography didn’t exist,in newspapers the photos were in black and white and even television was in black and white,the photographs were almost all in black and white. Black and white was and is easy, anenlarger, two basins and the negative developer, you can producephotographs even without an enlarger, by printing in contact, you can developfilm even without a developer. In those years photography was very widespread, almostin every home photographs were developed and printed, to the disappointment of parents whofound the bathroom at home occupied for hours.50 years have passed, colour has made enormous progress, digital too but Iam tied to my black and white photography, even if I sometimes takecolour photographs. With digital you can do everything immediately, bright colours, no dust,everything immediately visible, you don’t need a darkroom, you don’t need sensitive paper.I like the smell of the darkroom, the red light, the big oldcounter, seeing the image slowly appear on the sensitivepaper as if by magic, after 50 years I can't give it all up. Color is a traitor, itcheats you, vivid colors attract you and in fact they use them to make you spend, colors makean object attractive even when it isn't, color is a deception.Black and white is honest and discreet, it doesn't sneak into your brain to activate yoursensors and it still does its job and does it better. Do you want to know if aphotograph is of great value? open it in Photoshop and then switch it to monochrome, if thephotograph is of value it is beautiful even in black and white, but if you find it dull and insignificant itmeans that it is a poor photo, even if it is in color.I would like to clarify, the monochrome of digital images is not the black and white of analog photography, in practice a gradation of gray is assigned for each color and its shades, I find monochrome images, even if clean and glossy, flat, as if they had no relief. The Talking Peppers Art Photography project was born in 2000, color had already invaded magazines, television, cinema for years, it was everywhere, black and white was considered old and close to disappearing, sensitive paper and developments were hard to find. I created Talking Art Peppers Photography in black and white, 4x5 flat films on optical bench, old macro lenses created for scientific purposes, put out of use by digital and printed on archive paper with cotton support. 24 years have passed, black and white is not dead, indeed it is more alive than ever even if not very widespread, it deals with art prints and high-level work. Sensitive papers have returned to photography shops with excellent products, the old manufacturers of photographic equipment have started to distribute trays, thermometers and developers again.
The photographic shots are taken with a 4x5 format optical bench camera, the lenses used, for a distance from the subject of 10/15 cm, are macro lenses and microscope lenses, the extension of the bellows of the camera can reach 40 cm. The loss of light on that extension reaches 400%, the higher the magnification ratio the more the depth of field decreases, this forces the diaphragm to be closed down to f.64 and even f.90, with such diaphragm closures there is a further loss of light of 600/700%. In short, it involves working with halogen lights of over 2000 Watts with exposure times of about 2 minutes. A more sensitive film could also be used, the 4x5 format negative has no grain problems, so less powerful lights could be used but honestly I am not very inclined to use high sensitivity films. The subject under the heat of the lampstends to heat up and collapse on itself so much that, lately, I have replacedthe classic photographic lamps with electronic flashes of 3000W/s. For the bestrendering of the result of these photographs, after many attempts, I havereferred to an old rule of photographers from a hundred years ago, expose for the shadows and develop for thelights, more simply, overexpose and underdevelop, with this ancient and simplemethod you can have a wider tonal scale. In practice this method can beconsidered the grandfather of the Ansel Adams Zone System, anything but simple butvery effective.
While in painting surrealism is a variant that has existed for many years and withmany supporters, in photography, which was born in practice around 1850, it is somethingvery different. The painter with the brush has free rein, the photographer does not. Photography is arecording of reality, that is, of an existing thing and, through a technical means, thecamera, placed on sensitive material, the physical photograph. Photographicsurrealism is different from pictorial surrealism and in fact, in photography there arevery few surrealists, the historical ones are two, Man Ray (Emmanuel Rudzitsky) and Bill Brandt.I would like to point out that photographic surrealism is the one with the camera and not the onewith Photoshop, which can be included in pictorial techniques or, better yet,in unidentified mixed techniques but not in photographic ones.Leaving aside the motivations of Man Ray and Bill Brandt, if we look attheir works we notice that they are pure black and white photographs and that they have nothing to dowith modern works made with Photoshop, which, as I repeat, cannot be associated withphotography but are passed off as such.Talking Peppers Art Photography fully responds to the canons of photographicsurrealism dictated by Man Ray and Bill Brand, who with their photographs wanted to bring abouta change in society and its structures. Their works were clearly detachedfrom the traditional photography of the time, the surrealism of the two masters was born a hundredyears ago.Talking Art Peppers Photography is clearly detached from contemporary (real)photography and is placed alongside the surrealism of a hundred years ago, that is, when it was born.In recent years, surrealism has adapted, not to the canons dictated by Man Ray and BillBrandt, that is, to those who developed and perfected it, but rather to theconvenience of Photoshop. Wandering the web and downloading images, modifying them, cutting them,recoloring them, enlarging or reducing them and then making a collage, strictly inhigh-contrast colors, because in black and white they would become verymodest images. I believe that if you want to dedicate yourself to surrealism you must necessarilyrefer to Man Ray and Bill Brandt.In the 1950s the great Italian photographers of the time gathered together and put order inthe photography of the time, which, leaving pictorialism, wandered adrift and without rules.Neorealism was born, that's what the new movement was called and the rules were established.Photography had to tell the story of reality. Photography developed, became popular, photography books, called photo books, were very popular, I am now thinking of Giacomelli's (1954) the women of Scanno, an Albanian community that arrived in Abruzzo hundreds of years before, with all their culture, their customs, their cuisine, their Greek Orthodox religion. Giacomelli's photography book is still present in bookstores, it has made this people and their traditions known. I think that if photography wants to develop it will have to do as it did in the 1950s. Establish clear rules again. First of all, let's establish what photography is, what digital art is, what digital photography is, etc... Now it's all in the same pot, they call everything photography, it's not like that, photography is an image obtained with a camera and a photosensitive support, the negative printed on photographic cardboard, by photographic cardboard or photographic paper we mean paper sensitized to silver halides and not the paper of the PC printer with which digital photos are printed. If an image is obtained by downloading other images from the web, recomposed and then printed on computer paper, it is not photography, it must be called something else.
In the development of the Talking Peppers Art Photography project, which was initially calledNus-Noûs, nothing foreshadowed the interactive component, which was born almost by chance.The idea of presenting a “rotating” work where visitors can rotate it in order tofind the position that most stimulates them, in a place, exhibitions and museums, where it is strictlyforbidden to touch the works was a consequence of the reactions of visitors inprevious events.These images have their meaning only in the position in whichthey are presented, if they are rotated that content would disappear but it would be more correct to saythat it would change. In fact, these images have different meanings, depending ontheir rotation. Hence the idea of mounting a work on a painter's easel, fixedat the back to be able to interact with it. During exhibitions, when possible,together with my photographs, I insert the structure of the “rotating” photo.Visitors have shown that they appreciate this photograph very much because it allows themto actively participate in the artistic event and, fascinatingly, to touch the work,which at that moment is only yours, to touch a work where touching them is forbidden. Sometimes Ihappened to see visitors return to rotate the photograph, as if theyhad not seen it well, as if they had forgotten something to see. In reality thisphotograph contains hundreds, perhaps thousands of other images, for this reason visitorsreturn to rotate it. Sometimes it has happened that the visitor is hesitant to say whatthe photo suggests to him, it could have brought out unpleasant things or perhapsintimate things that he wants to keep private and observers do not always accept thedialogue about this photograph, they remain silent continuing to look at it and get away withsaying that it is interesting.Unfortunately, safety regulations sometimes do not allow the placement ofthis structure, if the rooms are narrow there is the danger that visitors will stumble over it.I cannot always place it.
When I received the invitation to participate in the event I realized that it was acompetition for designers but, within the competition, there was a sectiondedicated to photography. Without much conviction I followed the instructions and presented therequested works. After some time, with deep surprise I was informed that I wasthe winner of the Silver Winner 2021. I went to the site to search among the winners and found myname along with a substantial amount of documentation to use on my site as well as onmy curriculum but also with many other uses. I browse the site and find the otherwinners, all designers and planners with images of their projects. Futuristichouses, watches, yachts, furnishing objects, I was amazed by suchbeautiful objects. I think that I too am a designer, I don't design ships, I don't design shoes but Idesign interior furnishings, like an armchair, an innovative table, aclock. You don't just furnish horizontal elements, floors and ceilings, but also vertical ones, the walls, in the walls there are doors and windows but then everything is white, like in the furniture catalogs. The walls have the right to be decorated just like the floors with furniture and carpets and like the ceilings with chandeliers. It's not a modern idea, you just have to go into a church to find all the walls decorated. The sale of works of art is a very complex thing; however, the art market makes mind-blowingfigures but the art market is not just Picasso, Mirò, Chagall, who reachexorbitant figures. Art is also emerging, with very affordable prices, withnot excessive figures you can furnish your white walls, making sure they are less pale and more cheerful, you just have to choose the right objects that go well with thefurniture and above all with the taste of the owners of the house. Works of art give atouch of refinement to the house, like bookcases, which also furnish thevertical elements of the house and not just the floor. When you enter a house and findso many books you are forced to think that it is a house of cultured and sensitive people. The wallsdecorated with paintings, drawings and photographs, also in this case you think that the inhabitants ofthat house are cultured and sensitive people, as well as of good taste. The difficult thing isto convince people to furnish their walls.
In the year 2000, when I started the Talking Peppers Art Photography project, I hadthe idea of selecting 30/40 images and then closing the project and moving on to otherphotographic commitments. After about three years and a hundred 4x5 inch negatives, I selectedabout 40 images, a number that allowed me to fill even a fairlylarge gallery. It took me three years to have 40 photos selected but only becauseit took me almost two years just to have the first interesting photo. In 2000 I was alreadya photographer with over 25 years of experience. One day I noticed a yellowpepper with a strangely human shape in the refrigerator, I decided to photograph it, I set the scene, I tooksome shots with the 4x5 optical bench, I developed and immediately made some small prints.A big disappointment, the human features that I saw on the pepper were not present in thephotographs. More disappointed by my poor photography skills than by the collaboration of the pepper, is it possible that I can’t put the unmistakable features of the pepper in the photograph? Thinking that I’ve done something wrong, I photograph it again, I put lights and a black background, I frame it, on the frosted glass I see the beautiful pepper and its almost human features, I rotate it slowly to better highlight them, everything seemed to be going well, I take a shot, develop it and print. Another disappointment, in the photos I see a normal pepper, not the one I had seen in the camera, I rack my brains to figure out what was wrong but there was nothing wrong, the features of the pepper simply couldn’t be seen in the photographs, I make other attempts without success to the point that the poor pepper, between the cold of the refrigerator and the heat of the lamps, abandons me. I go and buy other peppers, not like the one that had struck me but I absolutely had to have the photographs with what my eye saw. I was no longer interested in having the forms that Isaw in the photograph, I wanted to know whether or not I was capable of taking photographs. The failurescontinued, and his wife also added to this and made fun of my modelsinside the refrigerator. After I don't know how many kilograms of peppers, thefirst results began to appear, poor but I convinced myself that if I continued, thingswould improve.With the first results, I immediately realized that the normal lenses of the optical benchwere not suitable for photos taken so close up. Having discarded the idea of buying a new macrolens for optical bench that would cost me three months of salary, I began to look for aused one but it was always expensive, one day I realized that the advancement of digital was putting high-levelscientific lenses that could be bought for very little money out of use.I bought a Leica lens in excellent condition but almost a hundred years old. The imageswere wonderful, sharp and brilliant, exceptional microcontrast, plastic images,the optics seemed to improve the surface of the peppers. Something was still missing, theglossy surface gave annoying reflections, a suitable development was needed, after havingtried several I found the right one. Two years later I managed to obtain twenty beautifulprints of peppers. I called Giovanna Calvo di Ronco. I went to her house and broughttwenty enlarged photographs and asked her to write down a text for me. She called the project Nus-Nous, from a Greek and a French term that literally means body and mind.I was so taken by this project that when I reached the 30/40programmed prints, a number suitable for exhibitions, I decided to continue, currently thenumber of negatives archived since the year 2000 exceeds 1200. I haven't had the idea of closing theproject yet, I don't find another project so engaging.
The “Rotating” photo is a wooden structure consisting of a painter's easel that can be folded up for easy transport. A photograph has been fixed to it, hinged at the back in the center to be rotated 360°. Since in exhibitions and other artistic events the works cannot be touched, this structure has an explanation of how to use it, rotating it on the outside of it, where a black passe-partout has been fixed. During an artistic event I notice a gentleman, aged 30/40, who approaches the photograph on the easel, then takes a step back, rotates it, the expression on his face changes, he smiles. I approach, ask what he thinks, he says that the photo to be rotated is a good idea and expresses his feelings about the content of the photograph; an elephant's head! Not expecting such a clear answer, I look at the image to look for what the observer was saying with extreme clarity, the animal's head, but I don't see it. I peer inside the image in the hope that I've missed something. He notices my astonishment and points to the ear and the trunk, saying that the image is very clear. I continue to look for it but I don't see the elephant's head in that image. I try to explain the Talking Art Peppers Photography project to him, adding that everyone sees different things in photographs, also according to their state of mind. In the first exhibitions, there was a phrase at the presentation: “Everything you see, or rather, that you think you see, may not be reality. The explorer, looking at the clouds, sees mysterious landscapes, the poker player, the ace of spades”. Talking Art Peppers Photography, are photographs of enlarged parts of peppers(macrophotographs) we attribute the meaning they seem to have to ourselves, whenmy daughter was little I showed her the photographs and asked her what it seemed to him, shelaughed and answered me that it was a pepper, because she saw that I was photographing them, she didn'tsee anything, she had no memories to bring out. These images have the ability todig into memories and bring them to the surface, they can bring out even thingsthat are apparently forgotten. It would be interesting to understand the reason for the elephant head, you canimagine that as a child he had a very dear little elephant, or that hewas particularly struck by a circus show, or who knows what else butthere is certainly a connection. Talking Art Peppers Photography sometimes surprisesme too, I often happen to photograph a nice pepper, I think, something interesting mustsurely come out, after an hour of work, that's how long it takes to takeseveral shots, making small changes and small variations on the lights. Once thenegatives are developed and after they have dried, I check the correct exposure and thefocus, the only feasible operations, from the negative it is not possible to understandwhat the final image will be and what exactly will appear on the paper, the image on thenegative is called precisely "latent image" and even if the cycle is not completed, you will notknow what the final result is. Once the negative is dry, I prepare the baths and start to makeseveral tests. After drying them, the final image is checked, often it happens thatafter so much work you are disappointed, I thought an excellent result and instead Ifind an image that does not live up to expectations, I archive negatives and positives,patience!It can happen that after a few weeks or even a few months I get my hands on something that seemed banal and I see it in a new light, this image is beautiful! I should point out that I archive modest images in one way and I keep the ones I consider better highlighted but sometimes I come across a very beautiful image among those considered not up to par and this happens quite frequently. These images need to be looked at with a certain amount of attention, if you are tired, distracted or with other things that occupy you you cannot understand the content well.
Artists generally take great care in the conservation of their works, paintersgenerally use oil colors on canvas mounted on wooden strips, these elementsare extremely durable. Photographers print their photographs onpaper/cardboard, paper does not last more than a hundred years, it yellows and decomposes,the image of analog photography is a metallic image, formed bysilver halides, which with the development and fixing treatment becomes metallic silver,obviously this does not have the problems of old age but the paper that serves as a support does.Museums that have to conserve books of great value (that are not made of parchment,which is sheepskin) use to conserve paper books in display cases with controlled air andhumidity, said books are never touched and if there is an extreme need to browsethem this is done with magnetic systems, to avoid touching them. The system forpreserving photographs consists of replacing the normal cellulose cardboardwith cardboard made with cotton, much more resistant to time. Anothermeasure to increase the duration over time is the selenium toning that furtherextends the life of the photographs, in addition to giving the photo a pleasant shade thatgoes from light pink to dark pink, if you want to eliminate these shades just act onthe dilutions and the print always maintains its characteristics of duration over timewithout any dominant. All these measures have a purpose, that of makingthe artist's works survive even after his death, if the photos are well treated it isas if the photographer continued to be present.Talking Peppers Art Photography began in 2000, in the period in whichdigital images spread immediately, it was easy to make them, you could see them immediately, notlike analog and very cheap images. This led to the total abandonmentof the old chemical photography, giants like Kodak and Agfa closed their doors,the same thing happened with the manufacturers of photographic accessories. In practice, the endof the old analog photography had been decreed. In this context, my project was born and it was bornas analog photography in black and white. Obviously photography, which seemedto disappear, has not disappeared at all, we can say that it is in great shape, it is no longeras widespread as it was years ago, it deals with high-level prints and is alive and well.
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