A dark, sometimes abstract, urban universe is what the eye of this
Italian photographer has to offer.
It's a unique point of view of the world and people.
Nuno Soares/
Cristina Correia
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Simone
Sbarbati takes great pictures. Enough Said. But what we appreciate
most is the melancholic urban eye that he developed. One thing for
sure, there's not a communication between the visual of the website
and his line of work. Not that we think that it's a problem, but
after watching his photos one get's to wonder about the website
we could do with them.
Sessions like Leaving Office and Hotel Life are full of details,
those details that we get to associate (not so clearly) to places.
His colour is dark, but confortable, even in the Bored by the Sea
Session, and the Black & White Architectural are our fave ones.
The (Study for) A New City is a dark, very dark environment, we
can say, like a New Gothic made from several schools of Architecture.
This is what we think as the most creative part of his work, redefining
our point of view from his cammera lenses.
About the People and the Snow Man, there's always this melancholia
in the air, even without total lack of presence of humans, the characters
are place in situations of some sadness, and that is poetry.The
experimental work seems to gather all we have written here in an
abstract feel.
"Architecture is one of my favourites subjects to shoot at.
I love buildings, the way they transform spaces and cities. Suggestions
they can give you when you see them (buildings), go inside or live
into.
The very first photos I shot with my father's old Nikon were photos
of factories and country houses near my home. When I went digital
I've become going around Bologna (the city where I live) taking
photos and photos and photos and that's how I put together my early
series. But they didn't satisfy me too much. I like very much to
look at other photographers' works. I buy books, go to exhibitions,
try to find someone I still don't know around the net.
I prefer the "german school". Those cold hi-definition
buildings and architectures. So... I tried to make something similar
with my first series and when I reckon I cannot do it...
That city is very wonderful. So contemporary, fresh... I was accustomed
to italian typical architecture (a great thing if you don't live
everyday of your life in Italy :-): Bologna's building are red,
yellow, brown. Nearly all the buildings. In Hamburg I saw iron,
stell, concrete. Blue, black, gray. It was very inspiring for me
(it doesn't mean I've never seen a city like this before: simply
I didn't evere look at it with a photographic eye).
I've took a lot of photos in Hamburg and then I've put up a series.
Some month after Hamburg I travel a bit around Italy and then I
went to Paris and Wien. All the photos I took were shot in an "Hamburg
way". Now I'm working on an autoproduced book with b&w
photos of those cities. This book will be ready on fall, I presume,
and it will be the conclusion
of what I call "my first period". After that I bought
a SRL digital camera. A nice one. And new ways opened up in front
of my eyes.
After some months of practise I've become working on my favourite
subjects and I tried to do something I did never before: taking
photos of people. I like to watch at other photographers' portraits...
but not mine. I've tried some to realize some portraits in the past
but they never satisfy me.
I'm not so "quick" as a photographer so reportage photography
is out of my possibility (and I even don't like it so much). I like
to "build" photos: from shoot to post-production. It's
ok for
architecture but for people I wasn't so good. I often "avoid
the obstacole" shooting at "people-like" subjects:
a snowman, monkeys... (that makes Josh Albers form Pixelsurgeon
laugh: he reviewed my site with this words "you have to love
a site where the PEOPLE category consists of a snowman!")
I live in an apartment with my girlfriend and four other people
and a cat. Some of them are students, some of them they work. You
know, it's like college life: nobody wash dishes, floor... Houses
in Bologna are very very expensive to rent and they're often old
and not so good looking. People take furnitures by the road (other
people leave them by the side of little roads and students pick
them up for their rooms).
We had a tv but the girl who owned it she leaves the apartament
taking tv with her. So we passed weeks without tv (a not so bad
thing!). The boy who took her place in her room said he would have
need a tv so he try to search for it by the road. When he finally
find it, we discovered it was not a fully functional one. It doesn't
have remote control and there was
no way to adjust brightness or contrast. And brightness was set
on "really really dark".
So, nowadays we still watch at a dark tv and we're not able to see
everything:
night scenes on movies are totally black for us! Some times later
I began taking very dark photos. Naturally. Without thinking of
doing dark photos. So I realized it was because of our dark tv!After
some tryouts I find them really good photos. The main work is the
post-production but I need to use some skill when I shoot, too.
First dark photos I realize they remembered me William Gibson's
novels' atmospheres so I've began working on a series called "A
new city", totally shot in Bologna and Berlin.
To realize those photos I needed to do some study-shots to acclimatize
withthe atmosphere. When I finished the study phase I rekon they're
were good enough to become a brand new and self-standing [I don't
know the right expression in english to say that something could
be independent from something else] series and I call it "(Study
for) a new city" as it really comes. Those dark architecture
photos gave me the way to realize other subjects.
Now I consider it my own-style (maybe :-).Experimental photos are
just like they are called: experiments. Something I wanna do without
explain myself the reason I was doing it. Some of them are more
"graphical" than other photos of mine. Some are more abstract.
The
experimental section on my site is like a folder where I put photos
because I like do
it in that moment.Future projects: I'll keep shooting for my "A
new city" series and keeping collaborating with web magazines.
I like them very much. They're so free. And they're a good
window to the world. I always look for new mags to collaborate with
and in magazines
I often find good photographers. I'm also working on my own mag,
with my girlfriend Ethel. It would be out in some days. The name
is "Freshcut.it" and it's a free web-mag focused on young
italian creatives. It accepts material (photos, graphics, street-art,
illustrations) from
people up to 21 years old. I don't know if it would become a good
magazine but I wanna try. I thing there are lots of young talents
outthere and I want to show them and their energy to
the worlds.
I'll began working as a freelance for an italian agency
based in Rome.
It will open in september. People who founded the agency are the
creator of a cool italian paper-poster magazine: Stirato. I wish
it would be a nice collaboration."
RELATED LINKS
images used with the author's permission*
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SIMONE
SBARBATI