Photography

Over the years, Photography has become not only a fundamental tool to our visual communication arsenal, but also a way to push the boundaries of our creative vision and further express ourselves as authors, quickly becoming our primary visual language, both artistically and commercially. Below you will find some selected images from our archive, accompanied by few words to introduce our photographic work, provide some context and give you an idea of what we aim for as photographers at Blumagenta. This short selection of images includes both personal projects, self-assignment, paid assignments and commissioned works, in no particular order.

As commercial photographers, our core business mainly consists of Portrait Photography and Corporate Photography:  environmental portraits, corporate headshots, workplace views, family portraits, editorial portraits for artists, celebrities and public figures. 

 

 

It is not about beauty, it is about essence: our personal approach to Photography

Our goal is to capture what we perceive to be the essence of what’s in front of the camera lens in a particular moment, whether it is a person, a tree or an inanimate thing. The essence of something is never found in plain sight on the surface, and almost never reveals itself at first glance; on the contrary, it needs to be dug out and brought to light.
It is a constant process of observation, study and ultimately understanding of what the camera sees and may reveal to you.
The world is already filled with tons of beautiful photos, but beautiful can also be extremely boring. We would like to add to the counter only those that interest us

Perfection is as cold as death. Life is never perfect

Imperfection is what makes our reality unique. That is why not only we like to indulge imperfection in our photos but we go looking for all the nuances that can define the character of a given subject. We are particularly interested in that which is out of the ordinary, that which manifests itself unpredictably and spontaneously, revealing itself for what it is, rather than how we want it to be.

A personal approach begins with a personal story

Here’s how Vincent Moro and Aurora Giampaoli got into photography and the path that brought them here:

“I come from the field of Visual Communication; Graphic Design and Art Direction have been my bread and butter for over 20 years. Initially, Photographs were essentially “just images” to me: functional visual components for a publication’s layout, to illustrate a product or service, lintels on which to build brilliant advertising campaigns, a perfect match for a clever tagline. Beside my profession, of course, I also took some photos now and then, at friends and family, on special occasions, on vacations, on holidays etc. As most of us do; just to crystallize a memory of something special, that’s it.
Things changed in the early 2000s, when I found myself working mainly for the Fashion Industry. Fashion imagery IS Fashion Photography. All the visual communication of the Fashion System revolves around Photography, merges with it, in a fluid relationship of mutual contamination and constant evolution. In those years, I had the opportunity to closely follow the work of some very talented fashion photographers, I was immediately hooked, and this made me fall down a deep rabbit hole, slowly but inexorably, and eventually projected me in a kind of new visual dimension, in which photographic vision takes over the way we normally look at the World around us, and radically changes the way we see things. All things. Even ourselves. What I lacked in fashion photography was authenticity and spontaneity; behind the curtains everything felt too contrived to fully engage the spectator in me.
So I began to avidly study the technique and the language of Photography in all its genres, from Portrait Photography to Street Photography.

I was eager to explore, experience, and document all that I was now seeing with new eyes through photography and so I started to photograph everything I found of interest, quickly realizing that the more I explored the world through the lens, the more interesting perspectives were revealed to me, the more I discovered interesting things to photograph.
I ended up spending most of my spare time with a camera in my hands photographing things, spaces, places, people. Especially people: people in empty spaces, in public and private places, people alone and in company, people who do things, who have things to say, to remember, to forget. I have found that there is always an inner referral to something inside me in what I photograph. Some photographs resonate powerfully, others less so, but the intimate connection with my soul is always present. So, I began to follow the «voice» of those images that resonated loudest within me and to explore an uncharted world in which I ultimately found myself at ease. From the very beginning of my photographic journey, I especially looked for a certain fragile balance of some contrasting elements: the result of tension given by several possible, sometimes unpredictable, factors: the ambiguity of a given situation, the undefinable, intimately conflicting or seemingly contradictory nature of a certain subject, a strong contrast between shapes, lights, shadows and colors. Eventually, taking and crafting photographs became a central part of my image-making work, even though, to this day, I still struggle to label myself as a photographer and I prefer to think of myself simply as a visual communicator.”

Vincent Moro – April 2019

As a child, flipping through my family’s photos and Polaroids stored in tin boxes and old albums, I would get lost for hours observing hidden details of a scene or the poses of the subjects, so far removed from today’s iconography, or simply looking at the bleaching lights of the prints. I guess this fascination came from the power Photography has always exerted over me: the intrinsic capacity of the medium to stimulate  vivid suggestions over the mere documentation of a particular event. I couldn’t help looking at a picture without wondering: who took the photo? What were the subjects doing there? What happened the moment before and after the shot? I realized that with a single frame you can tell a story, and over time I began to tell mine through the camera. But it was only during my university years, studying Cinema and  Digital imaging,  that I began to seriously approach the Medium and the Art of Photography and, in particular, it was my passion for Cinema that led me to explore lighting and scene composition.

Following this path I felt drawn to staged photography, a genre in which the final image is the sum of a series of both technical and conceptual choices, requiring careful planning of every little detail and meticulous staging; a methodology that is still part of my Still Life Photography. I think that originally photography was a way for me to recover a salvific liturgy that I glimpsed in my old family photos, and also to maintain a distance from the everyday reality in which I was not totally comfortable and which I had therefore chosen to shut out the door. Only later I decided to step out that door, blending different genres, and challenging my photographic vision willing to always bend the boundaries of an ever-evolving language.

Aurora Giampaoli – January 2023

Even the most interesting story goes unheard if it is not well told.

A storyteller should feel a personal involvement in the story if he wants to engage the audience. Empathy, authenticity, originality are the foundations of every good narrative, especially those that rely on images. Of all stories, those told by people’s faces and bodies are the ones we feel most connected to. Each person’s image tells a unique story, which yet is almost always common to us and connects in some way to our own. To captures the personality of your subject into a photograph is quite a big challenge, especially if you don’t even get to know the person you are about to photograph.
Often photographers can only observe what barely emerges on the surface, beneath the masks we all wear, behind a small old scar, a sudden movement of an eyebrow, a hint of a smile, a slight twinkle of the eyes, a micro gesture of a hand. So our decisional process has to be based on good intuition in order to get the shot that matters: the one that conveys a persistent image of the subject being portrayed. But, in the end, what the photographer gets is what the subject (consciously or unconsciously) is willing to give. Each worthwhile photographic portrait is ultimately a gift. And, to collect that gift, first the photographer needs to be willing to give something: attention, time, acceptance, understanding. A good portrait photographer must recognize himself in the other and embrace what yet remains unknown. This is our greatest quest.