Simone Mizzotti

What type of printing do you prefer?

Fine art printing, of course, but sometimes lambda printing is also an excellent solution. 

What comes first, the idea or the fascination with the material? In other words, does the artistic/photographic project come first, or are you inspired by the techniques and particular processes that strike your attention?

I always think about the photographic project first, then I figure out how to print it and what media to adapt it to.

It depends on the project itself, but finalizing the print and the media always comes at the end. If you decide to shoot with a large-format camera, the print will undoubtedly be large. 

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

More than having kinship with masters, I have authors whose work has been a guide and a compass for me to navigate the world of photography.

Some are Italian authors like Luigi Ghirri and Guido Guidi, or American authors like Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and many others.

Having authors as examples is essential to understanding what you do and what you could do, it leaves you with an open space of imagination and possibilities.

Your photographic projects frequently feature landscape shots, both urban and otherwise, with soft colors and thoughtful compositions, immersed in a sort of timeless stasis.

The human element, often not immediately distinguishable or perceptible, is almost never the subject of the shot but rather a secondary, albeit indispensable, element, a small “cameo” that embellishes the scene.

This is also evident in the series “Fortress” and “Camp Inn***”, both projects from 2016.

I was struck by how simple curtains can recall both August Sander’s black-and-white portraits and Martin Parr’s colorful crowds. 

Objects that become so representative of a particular human situation that they replace the people who live it, personifying them.

What do you try to convey through this particular way of photographing, this poetics of yours?

What I strive for in my photographs is to infuse a personal and emotional connection that ties me to those places. I believe this is inherent in all the images I create, whether they’re part of a project or a single image that’s part of a larger photographic production.

I am very interested in including within my images all those elements that can enrich the scene, I always try to draw attention to those scenes or situations that perhaps no one would notice, this is what personally interests me the most.

Specifically in those two jobs you mentioned, Fortresses and Camp Inn, it was working on commission in a place I would never have thought of going, but it was a very strong, formative and very exciting experience. 

I was inside the Idomeni refugee camp, in Greece on the border with Macedonia, in the spring of 2016, when Syrian refugees were fleeing the war and finding refuge in Greece.

It wasn’t easy to work on contents other than telling the story of those people, I pulled myself out, put myself aside and tried to capture those simpler and more banal daily aspects. Fortezze was composed independently.

One day I was photographing these tents and at a certain point, stepping back to compose the shot, I collided with the tent behind me. From there I thought that the composition and framing were dictated by the space between one tent and another, and thus this documentation of self-built tents with recycled materials was born.

Camp Inn is merely the documentation of those spaces that we usually use as places of passage, service stations, train stations, ports, etc., and which instead have become places of settlement for refugees; they tried to make these places welcoming, recreating a daily life equal to all the others.

Future projects?

For now I am working on a documentation project on contemporary architecture in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

The next step, rather than a project, will be to complete the publication of a work that I have been carrying out for years, the project specifically is called Armungia and it is the almost anthropological documentation of this small town located in Sardinia, north of Cagliari, precisely in the Gerrei plateaus.