Return to the channel Twitch by Tech Princess #photo interview, the most loved appointment by photography enthusiasts. This week the two shooting artists, max&douglas, they interviewed Perfidious Aeolus, portrait photographer who runs one of the largest photography studios in Italy and who in his career has collaborated with important international agencies.
His images have been published in magazines such as NY Times, Communication Arts, Panorama First, Vision, Vogue Russia; he has worked alongside photographers such as Elliot Erwitt, Eugene Richards, James Nachtwey e Steve McCurry. In 2009 he was awarded the first prize of the National Association of Italian Professional Photographers Tau Visual for the artistic quality of his images. One of his most successful works was the photographic series “Clownville”Also exhibited at the Janet Coast Gallery in Recife in Brazil.
During the interview Perfidious Aeolus he told us about his projects and the photographic series “Clownville”, and what it means for him to be a street photographer and a portraitist. “Photography has always followed me. I have always had a great love for the image which I approached through parallel worlds such as cinema, illustration, as a user. I felt the desire to say mine too ”.
Eolo Perfido guest of #fotointerviste
“A great help in this sense was given to me by the manager of a photographic laboratory who took me to heart; he loved that little boy who brought him the photos, the rolls, and slowly we became friends. I started developing on my own and not having that cost in the end, that expense, allowed me to shoot more, to be able to test myself more, and therefore improve quickly ”.
“I believe that there are two types of portraitists: those who try to be as sincere as possible in representing the other, a dynamic that forces the photographer to constantly change because he has to face the other in order to understand him. But I am part of the other type of portraitist who sees in the other an actor’s tool, an element with which obviously to collaborate and which influences the photo, because a portrait is made in two. It is interesting when the person photographed is almost baffled by seeing himself, because he observes himself within an unexpected potential ”.
“Even for street photography there are different approaches: there are those who see it as documentary, in which the real becomes a bit the end of the work. I do a more abstract type of street photography because for me reality is a tool, it is an element that I reconfigure through the shot, the choice of time, the point of view. I continually test myself and try to build something meaningful with what I have, with respect to a certain type of poetics, of attitude ”.
Perfidious Aeolus, portrait photographer
“It is something that needs different times, different research. My street is strongly authorial but in an abstract form. I build content that can bring with it a whole series of emotions: street photos are emotion generators. I think that in the street the project is the photographer with his stylistic system, with his taste, with his aesthetic sense. It is necessary to excite, to make a work of synthesis, to use very few words that leave their mark: this is how I experience photography.
“The street allows me to live my personal and solitary relationship with photography. The machine becomes your tool, something you perceive as your extension; you feel it yours and you are more fluid. This is also a work of refinement over time “.
“Every time you meet someone there are fundamental variables, such as time, to be taken into consideration, because sometimes it happens that you have to take portraits in a short time, and then relational dynamics that have to do with power relationships; you generate a small photographic territory that can be your studio, or another place where you hope to have some control, a control that is sometimes not evident, but which is necessary. And from that point of view there is no method or rule: you have to develop a sensitivity, you have to be able to empathize with people, understand even when it is appropriate not to speak. Even silence can be a basis on which to build a portrait ”.
#photo interview: Perfidious Aeolus guest of max & douglas
© Eolo Perfido
“I always feel a bit in a position to give but also to receive something when I make portraits. Over the years I have seen that the best thing is to find a key that leads the other to feel part of a project and to collaborate, explaining what you are going to do can help “.
“In the Clownville series the transformation work is particularly long; what I try to create is a condition of theater: I define a stage, sometimes very simple, a point of light, and then an interaction begins that often stresses the subjects a lot. I discovered that the mask frees subjects from the fear of being themselves, and frees from the fear of expressing something that we all have inside, anger, the desire to scream, even aspects that are not necessarily harmonious in our anatomy. It becomes an interesting experiment for a portraitist who wants to try to bring something personal out of his subjects as well ”.
“The models I take for Clownville are very transversal: it can be my neighbor, a more or less well-known photographer, a public figure. What I normally do is not to say who the subjects are, so they are all put on the same level: it is the mask that commands. Unlike what happens in advertising, which is all very planned, Clownville is something I do a lot of gut; I try not to always be true to myself, even to let myself go to the mood of the moment “.
Clownville: creating a theater condition
© max&douglas
“Our work has seen many moments of ups and downs, of crises, of generational changes and of working methods. In this sense, training has become something important; until you try to train you don’t know if it can do for you, and over the years it has become a passion and that I do with pleasure “.
“When I had to explain what I was doing instinctively, I had to take a step back and understand myself even better. I dedicate myself as much as possible to people, to students, I try to share what I know because that’s what I decided to do. It is an exchange that has certainly improved me as a photographer and author as well ”.
“I was lucky enough, when I was already a photographer, to be an assistant to some important photographers, like McCurry, Elliot Erwitt, Eugene Richards; they were represented by the same agency that had started representing me too, and when I saw these big names I put myself at their service as an assistant ”.
Accept the gaze of others
© Eolo Perfido
“They were all great photographers but they basically had one thing in common: the ability to get what they wanted, which is very important in our work. Often we have to collaborate with people, and for this we need to know how to insist, find a key to reading, have great willpower. This unites them all ”.
“As for social media, I don’t mind that photography has become more democratic; a more educated society is a positive thing, the problem is that the visibility of the uneducated has increased a lot, and this generates background noise, which has always existed and has become deafening. It is important to develop tools to be able to select: I manage my social networks and I do it carefully. It can be complicated for a young author today to live in this tsunami of images ”.
“The photo of the two boys behind a mask was taken in Verona during a workshop: I saw these two boys running out of the corner of my eye, they hugged each other, he took off the mask and put it on his ear of her, a gesture that I found beautiful. I went over and took three photos in sequence. When you go street it is a continuous dynamic: you have to follow the flow, take the rhythm of this breath, and it is one of the tools I use to be less perceived, so as to be in sync with what surrounds me, to accept the gaze of others , don’t be ambiguous, be there and be sure of what I’m doing ”.