Luca Zizioli

What type of printing do you prefer?

My favorite paper for printing digitally created photographs is Fine-Art 100% Cotton. This type of paper allows me to achieve the results I’m looking for in color editing, especially in shadows and blacks.

I still really love shooting on film: in this case I prefer baryta papers like the “Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre rag Baryta 270gsm”.

Did the idea come first or the fascination with the material?

The idea definitely always comes first. The material is one of the components that contribute to the creation of a work that emerges in my imagination. Without the right material, however, the work remains incomplete: I don’t believe in the concept of dematerialization.

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

My teacher is Lorenzo Invernici, a talented artist from Brescia, who in recent years has evolved his artistic expression in the world of video, but he is also a great photographer.

On the international scene my guru is Joey Lawrence.

His travel photographs, with their opaque blacks and dusty lights that accentuate their narrative aspect,

they present the viewer with unconventional places and situations.

They immerse us in compositions rich and teeming with life, with details that force our eyes into continuous movement.

The same movement that is essential for a travel photographer and which can be understood not only as the physical movement of a body in space, but also (and above all) as an empathic journey, reaching out to the soul of another.

Given these peculiar characteristics, do you think your shots can be understood as “traveling portraits”?

People make the world magical, and in people I look for true energy.

I always travel with my wife, and we both seek out the “non-comfort zone” in our explorations: always low-budget, backpacking, we want to push ourselves where the superfluous and useless disappear, leaving true, primal feelings and emotions. Pure, raw energy, for the worse but especially for the better, because everyone tries to tell us that being different is dangerous, but we’ve always found immense wonder, openness, and hospitality in the different and the unknown.

We’ve realized that this human exchange is necessary, ancestral, extraordinary, and incredibly powerful. This isn’t rhetoric, but rather proven experience in many parts of the world: from India to Vietnam, Cambodia, Morocco, Cuba, Turkey, Indonesia, and more.

My photography is positioned here: personal contact always comes first, and then the shot, which makes sense because it captures a memory in time, making it tangible.

The color editing, on which I focus a lot, aims to add an “emotional” part to the image, which I personally experienced at that moment.

In summary, I really like and thank you for your definition of “empathetic journey,” I would really like to convey this in my photographs.

Future projects?

“People Magic the world” is my new project. It will be announced shortly on my website and social media channels