Ezio Manciucca

What type of printing do you prefer?

I like the idea of ​​being able to experiment with different materials, I often fall back on the same ones: Hahnemuehle fine art paper or prints on matte laminated photographic paper mounted on dibond.

What comes first, the idea 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 strike you?

The idea comes first… sometimes conditioned by the final medium. I was born with film, and certain choices had to be made during the design phase. Digital offers a myriad of opportunities once the shot is complete, but the risk is that you’ll never be satisfied, at the expense of an identity, a style, a focused project capable of telling a story.

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

Every work observed teaches and tells something!

When I was a student, I aspired to fashion photography. I gorged on Rawlings, Penn, Newton, Avedon, Watson, Moon, Leibovitz, Gastel, Roversi… then so many things changed, and I discovered a world of images, in 360-degree photography, film, television, advertising, and art. I lose myself in the photographs of Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson, Robert Polidori, reportage with all the Magnum photographers, fashion, still life, landscape, architecture, modern art, especially Andy Warhol, and pop art. So many different and stimulating things. Eventually, I understood that creativity begins with common elements and then rearranges them in new ways.

In his shots I glimpsed the sculptures of an artist very dear to me, Louise Nevelson.

What you share is a taste for composing silhouettes that have a familiar aura but are often not entirely recognizable, and the art of conveying the rhythm of forms to the observer while almost or completely excluding the counterweight created by color.

Pallets, warehouse objects and wooden and iron bars, all placed on top of each other through an unexplained rule, are the protagonists of his shots in the “Texture” series.

The immovable solemnity gives way to a delicate perception of movement in the “Eteree” cycle.

Here, design objects such as a Bialetti Moka pot or a Vitra Panton chair seem to flow in front of a lens intent on focusing.

I wanted to ask her what an object must have, in terms of shape and harmony, to trigger in her the desire to photograph it.

Bringing up Louise Nevelson embarrasses me. Something of hers has certainly remained in the unconscious, in “texture” and “black light.” I like the rhythm that harks back to certain mental patterns, I like monochrome to get straight to the essence without other distractions. In life and in things, I seek simplicity, “less is more.” I am captivated by design icons for their essentiality, designed to be functional before being stunning. In “Eteree,” the object is decontextualized to be simply what it is: a chair, a coffee maker, a car… Reassuring objects, in motion like life, blurred in our minds like archetypes to be reawakened.

Future projects?

First of all, continue to observe. I would still like to tell stories with objects, but something is also taking shape with architecture.