Pino Colla

What type of printing do you prefer?

Fine Art, depending on the type of image, however Baryta Hahnemühle. 

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

A good photograph has long been made with a camera, designed to avoid mistakes. For me, the camera is the tool for creating images. An image, unlike a common photograph, requires individual research, and the choice of subject will determine its path. For me, photography can only be on paper, the primary medium par excellence.

 

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

Ovid, Kafka and Goethe talking about metamorphosis, a theme very dear to me and one I have worked on over the years.

Plato with his myth of the Cave. Kessel (LIFE) from a technical standpoint, and Schedoni, very good at portraits.

Then Herbert List, Weston, Null… Each of them taught me something.

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I was particularly struck by his “Contemporary Portraits”.

In this series of works the subjects split in two, bringing to mind the work of the famous conceptual artist Giulio Paolini, specifically his sculptural/installative works, essential and pure in form, such as “Mimesi” (1975) and “Doppia Verità” (1995).

In “Contemporary Portraits”, however, there are also references to the context to which the portrayed subjects belong, which influence the progression of the guiding lines above the figures, in a sort of harmonious search for formal weights, a graphic analysis that describes and underlines the mysterious rules of the artist’s eye as he constructs an image.

Could you tell me more about this mechanism of selection, of almost Vitruvian “integrative deconstruction,” and whether the progression of these lines is influenced solely by the composition of the photograph or also by the identity of the subject portrayed?

I have always been fascinated by the concept of Time, by its incessant flow and change, by the moments that delimit without separating the “before” and the “after”.

In this series of works, Contemporary Portraits , I also used the “time factor” as a link between the two portions of the face that constitute the compositional structure of the work.  The subject’s close-up is cut in two and recombined to ideally reproduce its integrity, and the device I used to reunite them is precisely that of time, varying by years or even just a few days.

Obviously, the identity of the subject portrayed is of central importance, leading me to elaborate the image through insertions, clues, capable of revealing certain aspects of their history or character, pillars of the subject’s inner life. It goes without saying, therefore, that the photographic composition is enriched with details designed to represent two different moments in the subject’s life, and that my “squarings of the sheet,” the graphic-geometric signs, serve as a visual link of correspondences and relationships within a photographic composition that is entirely nourished by these delicate and necessary visual balances.

 

 

 

Future projects?

In the future, I intend to explore macro themes of environmental interest and to “bring to light” my artistic project “Before the Darkness,” linked to Giorgione and his Tempest, interconnecting with the reasons that led the Artist to choose to construct the work in that particular format.