about_en

Luca Grasselli's photographic journey is made up more of subtractions than acquisitions.

Originally from the Emilian province, born in 1967, Luca Grasselli began taking photographs as a child with a legendary Kodak 44 Instamatic. Early experiments and years of research and study allowed him to soon embark on a professional path in the fashion and advertising sectors. An indispensable technical background and experience, but not capable of exhausting the need to express himself in the artistic vision that translates into many of his street photography projects.

Luca Grasselli sets up a long-distance dialogue with his subjects, appropriating the lives of others to complete his own. The photos show us a moment of transit between a before and an after that the author reinvents and makes his own.

The author's gaze is that of a lover of photography, his instinctive visions translate into spontaneous poetics, not shouted but whispered images, captured not with the eyes and the mind, but with the eyes and the heart.

l’autore

It was the spring of 1985 when I decided to make that phone call.

In the previous days I had looked for the numbers of some photography studios and Claudio Zavaroni's appeared accessible to me.

I was little more than a kid. In our first meeting, I answered his questions mostly improvising... what did I know about how to "unwind" films or how to set up a set! He certainly couldn't have paid me, but in the end he agreed to take me on as an assistant... in truth I would only be the assistant's substitute!

Full of enthusiasm, I arrived at the studio on my Vespa, the same one that, a few days later, I would use to "distract" the models while waiting for their photo shoot to be ready; the assistant did this too.

That period alongside a professional made me rapidly grow in technique and in that ability, which I still consider today a fundamental talent for photographers: capturing that moment.

Beyond focus, exposure, framing; capturing the right moment, perceiving the moment before it followed, this, in one definition sums up any merit.

Certainly, however, another substantial component in my way of capturing time had already been formed through that whirlwind of experiences; in fact, "the vision" of my photographic character had already taken shape.

il percorso

I found in the images I took almost automatically, those gentle ways already seen in the works of Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis, I was so attracted to grasping, stealing, almost tearing away, fragments of my subjects' lives. It was a bit as if by entering into physical, intimate contact with the subject I could steal the soul and strength that did not belong to me.

So every moment became a relationship, a story, that moment magically sculpted on the celluloid by the light, it no longer remained a two-dimensional trait but was part of me, forever.

From authors such as Sebastiao Salgado or Gianni Bordengo Gardin I learned the documentary and evocative value of photographic expression, others such as Donal Moloney or Helmut Newton's passed on to me the form and technique of this communication. Their influences were determined to bring me closer to what resided within me; but it is from cinema that the stimulus towards artistic maturation and definitive awareness came.

“Der Himmel über Berlin” from '87 by Wim Wenders was a shocking experience for me, “La Double Vie de Véronique” from '91 by Krzysztof Kieślowski, and then the discovery of authors like Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon. Understanding from their works that my photography could be truly narrative, the shot was only the epilogue, the synthesis, the provocation to extract a story, an experience, a way to dilate time and make us immortal.

Finally the encounter with what for me is the sublime work of Anders Petersen and Jürgen Baldiga, the true genius, the accompaniment towards a new point of view; the new visual experience, that which manages to move the mind, to open it towards a new possible interpretation. The archetype that manages to make the new "vision" perceptible and tangible, the modulation of an unknown, attractive and inevitable thought, a transport between dreamlike sensations and oblivion.

i riferimenti

Tra le produzioni:

con edizioni LUCERNAFILM:

Berlino Anovantagradi-1990, Le voci di Ampandratokana-1991, Passanti-1993

con edizioni EDICTA:

Istantaneo 2001, Riflessi Incondizionati 2003,, Incerto Movimento 2007

con edizioni ILMIOLIBRO:

Nonritorno-2014, Recover-2015, Superstizioni Superstiti 2021