What type of printing do you prefer?
Did the idea come first or the fascination with the material?
That is, does the artistic/photographic project come first or is it inspired by particular techniques or processes that have struck you?
The photographic/artistic project develops around a creative inspiration that can significantly change from the initial idea with the use of new materials and increasingly advanced printing technologies.
So an image visualized and thought on paper, for me strictly opaque and fine art,
It can be modified and become transparent, shiny, brilliant, and with the help and suggestions of the people who work within the laboratory, who know the materials and their rendering well, they can be transformed into unimaginable finished works.
Do you have any Masters you look up to and feel close to?
I’m no longer a young photographer, so over time my teachers have often changed along with me. What I can say is that at the beginning of my professional career, Elisabetta Catalano was a photographer I wanted to be like, Letizia Battaglia and Carla Cerati were a stimulus for reportage, Annie Leibovitz for portraiture, Francesca Woodmann for her intense sensitivity, Rinko Kawauchi is today the contemporary photographer who fascinates me the most.
For the masters Peter Lindbergh, who recently left us, for the great respect towards women that shines through in his strictly black and white images, Sebastiao Salgado Josef Koudelka just to name a few, for the composition and photographic cut, Eugenio Recuenco for his imaginary world and among the young JR, a French artist who uses photographic collage in large format
Browsing through his portfolio, I immediately realized that I was faced with a body of work that is difficult to label through the use of adjectives or definitions, which would certainly prevent a complete and general vision of his poetics.
In fact, I note a sincere propensity to address social issues whose protagonists are those categories of people “relegated” elsewhere by society.
In the photographs taken from the “Alzheimer Laboratory” exhibition I glimpse the sensitivity of Gericault when he painted “The Alienated” in 1820-22, while in the “Lives of Others” series I have documentary shots in front of me in remote and lost places, theaters of recent world conflicts.
We then move on to the Botticino quarries with “Cave Canem Cracking Art”, an installation in Land Art style but with a performative approach that gives photography the task of bearing witness to the work, going beyond the concept of Hic et Nunc.
How would you describe this vast range of approaches that you have towards Art and Photography?
When people ask me to talk about myself and photography I always reply that “I do photography to live and to survive”
For “Surviving” I do what is asked of me, I propose to the client my interpretations, my look at the situation or object that is submitted to me, but commercially I think about the customer and the final use of the image. I perform to the best of my skills as a professional photographer.
To “Live” and to hold onto the passion that binds me photography to this day, even if a lot has changed since the 80s when I started, is the possibility of being able to express my feelings and my emotions in total freedom.
For me, photography is a lifesaver, a buoy, a port to return to or stay in, a musical instrument that prevents me from feeling alone, rather it keeps me company, stimulates me continuously and doesn’t tire me but helps me.
I observe life in its many aspects, I am attracted by the lives of others and I am close to the lives of women wherever it is and in every possible way, I love le atmospheres and light that changes the contours of things, I focus on small details and create imaginary worlds and abstract and I archive projects and images which for now are collected on hard disks and invisible.
Watching the documentary on Vivian Maier, discovering her trunk full of never developed film, I felt I wasn’t alone, I shot for myself, but I don’t think it’s a selfish gesture, I think it’s an intimate gesture.
Future projects?
2020 should have been an intense year of work and Exhibitions and installations, I don’t know how it will transform, the idea of online exhibitions is not within my scope for now and it seems outdated to me and everything that was taken before the block is useless.
During the mandatory closing days from March 6th to May 4th I photographed every day for a project I believe in, but which is a surprise for now. Who knows!.
Biography
Tiziana Arici
Photographer
https://www.tizianarici.com/ @tizianarici_photographerTIZIANA ARICI was born in Brescia in 1956. She began her photography career at 17, falling in love with the darkroom and taking her first black-and-white photographs. She attended technical and practical courses, opened her first photography studio in Brescia in 1984, and began collaborating with companies and advertising agencies. Since 1986, she has collaborated with companies, advertising agencies, and publishing houses. She creates images for both documentary and advertising campaigns, working in a variety of fields: interiors, gardens, food still life, and reportage. Her photographic work has been published in numerous national magazines, books on culture, architecture, exhibitions, and events. For years, she has been attentive to social issues affecting women’s lives, collaborating with associations and communities, and has taught photography courses inside the Verziano prison. She also immortalized the arrival of the Amphora for the National Stop Femicide Relay for the UDI (Italian Union of Italian Disciplined People). In 2007, she created the collective image “It’s Not Always All Pink,” anticipating by a decade the use of the color pink as a symbol of women’s protest. She conducts in-depth studies and debates on the use of the female body in advertising and on the education of the gaze. She has provided images for the covers of numerous books on women’s thought and international cooperation.