Luigi Brozzi

Since you often use print as a medium for the execution of your work, may I ask you which type you prefer?

Aside from small-format prints up to 15×22, which I use to organize projects or show off my work to clients, my printing needs are mostly for exhibition purposes. Initially, my standard format was 40×60, but lately I’ve been favoring 24×36, mounted in 40×40 matboard.

I find this format more suited to my photographs, as if I were using a more subdued and calm tone in displaying them, a somewhat more intimate way of presenting them; the square passepartout allows me to standardize the visual rhythm of the photographs on display, whether they are vertical or horizontal, which in any case are clearly quantitatively predominant.

Hahnemühle Fine Art papers are fantastic, both the Photo Rags which are usually the primary choice and the Textured ones, especially the fabulous William Turner.

What comes first, the idea or the fascination with the material? In other words, does the artistic project come first, or is it inspired by the techniques and particular processes that have struck you?

The idea always comes first; it’s the center of my journey; the methods, timing, and emotions that accompany it revolve around it.

The choice of material is the final touch, and is done after a few test prints to find the right harmony with the color and lighting choices of the photographs. I find this final step extremely interesting and satisfying. Adams’s words, which compared printing to the performance of a musical score, are truly true, its glorification coming from a complete understanding and immersion in the meaning and spirit of the images.

 

Do you have any Masters you look up to and feel close to?

So many! So many that I don’t know which ones to mention instead of others…

Regarding references, I find that many great authors can leave fertile seeds within us, which it is then up to us to grow and cultivate to express what we have inside, which is the only true ultimate goal of expressive arts such as photography.

I’m particularly fascinated by the artists of so-called Humanistic Photography, those dedicated to narrating reality, looking through it and drawing stories from what surrounds us; both their large-scale black-and-white and color works are often extraordinarily powerful.

I admire and follow many conceptual works, those involving the precise planning and construction of photographs, but personally, I can’t ignore the need to immerse myself in a real context, to actually have what I photographed in front of the camera; simply, my approach is to relate to reality, in the most classic and traditional sense of this activity.

This is also why I don’t use software to edit my photographs, except for what I did for many years in the darkroom with negatives: tone, contrast, highlights, and shadows. Most of the time, I don’t crop images. I believe my long training with reversal film has strongly influenced me to pay as much attention as possible to the moment of shooting, to the composition in the viewfinder.

I’ve long been very taken with black and white, but at a certain point I felt I had a hard time giving up color, even though it’s more complex and represents a greater challenge, especially in terms of rigor in the shot and very clear ideas in the development phase, in search of the register and chromatic mood that truly belongs to us and that is in perfect harmony with the content of the images.

However, I always give up the idea of ​​feeling akin to one or another of the Giants I admire and study; I consider them so high that I would never dream of comparing anything of my own simple work to theirs.

 

What I noticed in his shots is the constant search for detail.

Whether we are photographs taken in Italy or abroad, photographs of symphony orchestras or weddings, what is focused on is often a specific detail that can tell us much more about the context than any other type of shot could.

The use of a detail to describe the whole immediately brings me back to the concepts of Punctum and Studium theorized by Roland Barthes in “Camera Chiara”, one of the greatest essays on photography.

Could you tell me something about this particular way of selecting the focus of a photograph? 

You rightly cited Barthes, who is a must-read for anyone who loves photography…   some details, both material and, above all, emotional and expressive, are like nodes in the story, points where the representative energies of the language of the image are concentrated.

Searching for them, or rather waiting for them, often very patiently, is both a challenge and an indispensable pleasure.

I used the term “wait for them” because I strongly believe in the discipline and patience I strive to employ in perceiving what I photograph, just as I have very little faith in the rhetoric of “seizing the moment,” which presents itself in a fraction of a second, reducing many successful shots to a mixture of speed and luck. Luck in photography is very rare, much less rare is the result patiently and rigorously desired and constructed through study, time, concentration, and knowledge of what is being photographed.