Paolo Cagliero a.k.a. louisdead :: we can’t be perfect

A selection of photos from Paolo Cagliero a.k.a. louisdead

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Sliced by highway

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Primary

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Waiting for the final

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Turn left

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Broken perfection

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Pitfall

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Too sunny

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Zapatos

– Hello, Paolo. How would you describe this set of images?
– Thanks Brancolina, interesting selection, now I’ve got something to learn from my own shots!
I’m usually very careful about geometric composition. And these pictures are very geometric, but with an element that brakes the rigid composition: a car, an architectonic cut, a broken tile, a pair of shoes… These details give me an ironic sense of failure, as if we were declaring our imperfection. All these pictures should have the following caption: "we can’t be perfect".


– As a photographer, what do you find interesting about urban environments and architecture? What attracts your visual attention?
– When I think about the urban environment, I immediately think about people living there, even if in my photographies you will rarely see human beings. Everything but a non-sense.
I studied architecture but I’m not interested in architecture in itself. In an empty square I try to catch the empty, not the square. Or at least, its geometric skeleton.


– Which other photographic styles do you like besides architectural and urban photography?
– It’s hard for me to choose between a great minimal landscape and a great reportage portrait. I admire who can do both (not me).
Anyway it’s easier to say what I don’t like. I’m not interested in photographies overcome by technology in general (Photoshop, HDR, HiDef Macro, mega photography studio set, etc…)


– What motivates you to be busy with photography, what is your goal as a photographer?
– For me it’s just like a psychotherapy, but cheaper!
It really helps me to survive the chaos of ugly architectures all around me.
Taking shots is a way to find a formal beauty in everything, even in the ugliest one. It’s often like a game where I try to catch basic geometric shapes in the real world, or a strict geometric composition, or fake collisions between objects, ect. These are all methods used to organize disordered things, me first.

– Do you have a ‘dream location’ where you would like to take photos? Which city would you like to visit for a photo session?
– Not one in particular. Every city, even the smallest, can hide a precious treasure. And after all I don’t care about the main architectural landmarks, photographically speaking.


– What is your favorite camera?
– I’m not a camera fetish, I care more about the photo than the medium. Now I’m using a consumer reflex Canon, but I’d like to turn back to analogic and get a medium format like a Rolleiflex. Just to stop cropping to get a square format :-), my loved one.

– Did your photos get published in any photo/art-books or magazines and where do you expose your works on internet (website, blog …)?
– My photos have been published only on the internet.
Apart from my Flickr account and Five Minutes Monsters (another photographic project I’m gonna start these days), some of them are on sale on GettyImages, others are published on some blogs like Mykriteek (here and here), Troppotardi (here and here), State Elements, Shambola, Italian Casual and Quidanoi. That’s all, as far as I know.

I’d like to thank you once again for hosting me on this amazing blog.

– You are very welcome, Paolo. I wish you all the best with your photographic work.

claudia carlos magno :: urban visual poetry

Selection of photos from Claudia C. Magno

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Untitled (2011)

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Untitled (2010)

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Untitled (2011)

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Untitled (2009)

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Untitled (2009)

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Untitled (2009)

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Untitled (2006)

– Hello, Claudia. How would you describe this set of images?
– I love your selection of photos because they show some of the elements for what I usually look while photographing: forms, composition and geometry.


– As a photographer, what do you find interesting about urban environments and architecture? What attracts your visual attention?
– I´m an architect, what always attracts me are the relations of space, the subtle connections between elements and the references to the modernism. I like walking on thin line between figurative and abstract approaches.


– Which other photographic styles do you like besides architectural and urban photography?
– Since I live in Rio de Janeiro, I have a special affection for photographing beaches. I love the details of sand and sea, and I´m also fascinated by their color palette.


– What motivates you to be busy with photography, what is your goal as a photographer?
– Beyond the architecture, for many years I’ve also been involved with the visual arts, especially painting and sculpture. Photography is a passion and a continuation of this trajectory. Sincerely, I have no definite purpose other than to keep using photography to do a sort of visual poetry.


– Do you have a ‘dream location’ where you would like to take photos? Which city would you like to visit for a photo session?
– Not a “dream location” because I like photographing anywhere, however I have plans to visit Barcelona soon.


– What is your favorite camera?
– I always have a camera with me, so I prefer the small and unobtrusive ones. I use several compact cameras, Canon and Panasonic, and an Olympus E-620.


– Did you publish any photo books and where do you expose your works on internet?
– I have publish two books on Blurb: OCEANO and ESTRANHA GRAMÁTICA. I also participated in collective publications as Hypo-X-Series, a digital curation by Alan Wilson, HAPHAZART! magazine,Issue 01 and in the exhibition catalog Lo sguardo oltre | A look beyond by Maria Luisa and Anna.

I expose mainly on Flickr and at my website.


– Thank you, Claudia and best wished with your photographic work.

roB_meL :: architectural photography with an accent on details

Selection of photos from roB_meL

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FaTal AttractioN

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__E- ║__║__║__║

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The X Factor

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STWY. to N…Una escalera que lleva a en ningún lugar. Eso es toda la vida es todo acerca de…

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Blue diamonds

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bLUE SpACE – Z

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Multiple jaws

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Piano keys

– Hello, Rob. How would you describe this set of images?
– They all reflect some geometry, however austere – at times – and represent more than just a style in the ever-accelerating demand for new-looking architectural forms in a continuum. In search of the modernist idealism, they clearly define my expression of the definitive forms of Australian architecture as well as a search for other paradigms. All the photographs have a gridded, geometrical vocabulary capable of articulated varieties of types of expression.


– As a photographer, what do you find interesting about urban environments and architecture? What attracts your visual attention?
– The great expressiveness of the culmination of post modernism and deconstructivism has contributed immensely in my interests in photography. In an attempt to capture the formal vocabulary of the aesthetics between space and nature, my passion for geometric purity and perfection has led me to investigate this sort of referential rationalism.

There is also this element of geometry that disguise weight and highlight mass, materiality and the sensuality of purely material qualities. This way of looking at metaphors and controversy is what has a particular appeal to me.

It is through photography that I choose to express my view, even if it sometimes seems idyllic; the same way that every generation must build its own cities with its own ideas and styles.

As an artist, I find beauty everywhere in the urban landscape whose startling new aspiring forms have much to do with the spiritualistic implicit in the illusory forms of human achievement and engineering. There are also the other forms of beauty and harmony. Immersed in the Australian urban tissue are the tremendous amount of spaces that acquire a horizontal symmetry quite different from the gravitational vertical, and that are able to express better (or more sensually) in forms and by this intensification, its referential presence through underlined negation.

Geometry has always been the underpinning of my photography.


– Which other photographic styles do you like besides architectural and urban photography?
– Although I am very eclectic about the stylistic approaches in photographic rendering, I also favour the surrealists, those who have the talent to transform a landscape into a visionary world. Also those who manage to capture the emotion of the moment that they retransmit intact to perpetuate the ephemeral.


– What motivates you to be busy with photography, what is your goal as a photographer?
– Photography has always held, for me, an interest, but I have only started this seriously about 18 months ago. Having deeply been influenced during my studies recently, in Comparative Law at University, by the works of Jacques Derrida and his controversial approach to deconstruction, I found my niche in the uncensored, marginal and complete disregard for expectations in photography.

I want to capture the linear, the purely verbal formulae of structural forms. It is this constant evolution in architecture and these vital moments of crisis in its cyclic repletion that requires a constant revision of the discipline’s fundamental concepts. In search of its sobriety and a total redirection of ornamentation, I am with passion, trying to capture its very essence in its minimal aesthetic meanings. We are fortunate in Australia, to have several groups of “avant-gardiste” architects that are always pushing the limits of deconstruction. In short my aim is to capture the linear form that epitomises the elements in which the use of pure geometrical forms offer an expressiveness and a unitary whole. And this is not always easy, as one is sometimes restricted in the amount of space and field of vision that normally would be ideal. I like to expand my personal experience with futuristic forms in a quest that is more protean and less systematic.


– Do you have a ‘dream location’ where you would like to take photos? Which city would you like to visit for a photo session?
– I have a lot of cities that I would like to photograph. Firstly, Barcelona and Valencia, because of Gaudi and also of Santiago Calatrava’s immense contribution to sculptural architecture. And of course Paris, New York, Munich…. to name a few. The list goes on….. All cities have some tremendous potential in architectural and infinite differences.

On my list are also the works of Richard Meier, Thorn Mayne, Charles Moore, Helmut Jahn, Charles Gwathmey, Frankk Gehry, Mies Van deer Rohe.


– What is your favorite camera?
– Normally, I work with both a NikonD3100 and a Panasonic GH1K. But of these two, my favourite is the Panasonic for its versatility. It allows me the freedom of expression. Although I use several lenses, I tend to favour the 14-42mm and a 14.-150 mm which, in my view are more accommodating.




– Did you publish any photo books and where do you expose your works on internet?
– Some of my photographs have been selected to be published in “Shadows” magazine, a publisher based in the US, to be released in February 2012. Also, I am on Red Bubble, but unfortunately due to lack of time, I have been unable to maintain it at a steady rate. Apart from those featured on Flickr, I am planning to have an exhibit of my work some time next year. My goal is to have a book published on Architecture and the non stereo-type plural approaches of looking at this fascinating and complex science in a more or less philosophical interpretation or nihilist disseminative re-interpretation.



– Thank you, Rob. I wish you a great success with your photographic work.