Meriggiare pallido GAIA MAGONI
Presenze #4, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
Mino Di Vita interviews Mauro Marletto, who won first place in the photocontest #VIRTUALLY01 with the project Presenze.
Mino Di Vita: What motivated you to devote your energies to research photography, and how many years have you been developing it?
Mauro Marletto: I have chosen research photography as my means of expression for about 10 years now because I find it is the one most in line with my vision as a photographer-artist and to best describe my projects. My aim, in fact, is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. To tell my point of view of the reality that surrounds me. I like to photograph people immersed in their everyday life, made up of simple gestures in which a certain loneliness typical of the times we are living transpires. Through my images, I also try to communicate to the viewer, the restlessness I feel about the passing of time. They are metaphors for states of mind that signal the uncertainty of living, what I would call nostalgia for the present, that is, that fairly widespread sensation of not being able to grasp and live the present, having the impression that something is already disappearing at the very moment it manifests itself.
MDV: Architecture often stands out among your subjects, what meaning lies behind this choice?
MM: The disquiet I feel about the passing of time is not only found in the relationships between people, but also in the surrounding forms such as architecture or objects, whose transformations and marks left by time on objective reality I like to observe.
Presenze #2, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
MDV: Which authors most influence your photographic projects and why?
MM: They are those authors, and not just photographers, who through their work, give their precise opinion of the world around them and often with very particular styles also manage to reinterpret it. Alexandr Rodchenko strikes me for the different points of view of his images, creating new, disconcerting sensations with visuals that mislead the viewer, freeing photography from many of its conventions. Edvard Munch for his quest to express the subtlest visions of the soul. Edward Hopper for the strong sense of restlessness in his painting. He said 'I do not paint what I see, but what I feel'.
Presenze #3, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
MDV: Where do you find your inspiration?
MM: I rely on the feelings and atmospheres I perceive when looking at everyday life. The result is more intimate and more poetic photography. It is no coincidence that the people I photograph seem to be suspended in the void, they are timeless people, they are real people but with one foot trying to step out of reality.
Presenze #5, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
MDV: How does your creative process unfold?
MM: My creative process basically takes place in three steps: conception realisation and post-production. The first is the instinctive moment that starts from an idea or a need to tell something that strikes me at a given moment. The second is the practical part, i.e. when I am clear in my head how to carry out the work I physically look for places to take the photos. The third, through post-production I remove everything that I consider superfluous a sort of cancellation to arrive at the election.
Presenze #6, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
MDV: Are the themes you deal with in your photographs the result of a reasoned or instinctive process?
MM: They start from an instinctive process, which is everything before the shot, the birth of an idea, the creativity, then comes the part where I reason about how to realise the project, its maturation and realisation.
Presenze #7, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
MDV: How would you describe artistic photography?
MM: It is a type of free expression, which, not having principals, allows you to create in complete freedom, to be in complete harmony with yourself.
Presenze #8, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
MDV: In your opinion, what are the fundamental elements of taking a good photograph?
MM: I don't like beautiful photographs that are an end in themselves. A good photograph must stimulate the gaze and curiosity of the beholder, it must give the viewer a new reality, the creative photographer does not reproduce but bears witness to the world, he interprets it for the eyes of the beholder. Through his gaze he makes the invisible visible, and it is then that photography becomes invention, hence art.
Presenze #9, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
Presenze #10, 2020 © Mauro Marletto
Mauro Marletto (Torino, 1960)
I live and work in Turin. My first artistic interests ranged from painting to music, interests that still accompany me today, then I discovered photography, first in the darkroom with printing and then with shooting. In fact, at the beginning I took photos more to work in the darkroom, until one day, looking at a magazine with famous authors, I was struck by a landscape by Franco Fontana and from that moment on, my approach to photography changed. I begin to see it from the artistic side and I photograph in order to find my own personal style that represents me. I took part in a few workshops and after a period as an amateur, with a few exhibitions and some publications, I decided to combine my computer skills with my photographic knowledge to become a professional. I exhibited in Trieste, Florence, Lucca. I print my photos in limited edition inkjet on fine art paper
