It was at the age of five that I started playing with light.

Every summer my childhood home was barricaded.

In August in the south of Sardinia, the sun is bountiful: it was out of the question to play in the courtyard.

Locked up, nap for everyone: silence obliges.

No TV and no sleep, playing in silence and in the dark was no easy task.

Although my mother had scrupulously taken care to close the doors properly, there were still rays of sunlight coming through the old wooden shutters: like laser beams, the light rushed through the hall.

I didn’t need more to make the association with the steel cutlery.

With these magic spots, face down in the hallway: on my left the fork and the knife, on my right the big and the teaspoons.

The reflections were vivid and the projected figures well marked. 

The dark ceiling of the corridor was transformed into a theater of endless battles of scintillating spaceships in the strangest and most varied shapes with the only truce the passage of a cloud. 

In 1979 I received my first gift through the us post office hours, Star Wars action figures series from 1977, do I need to say how happy I was?

1977 – 1984 “He has a high capacity in pictographic expression to which he dedicates every moment of his free time at school”

I remember it as if it were yesterday…

At school, I drew every time!

And then the discovery of the first book, a real book, with the first photo: the effect was immediate!

The drawing next to the photo seemed to me “obsolete”.

Subsequently, it was the technical drawing that fascinated me!

The ultra precision of the lines, the circles, the parallels and the angles.

A millimeter apart and everything had to be redone!

I already saw myself as an architect!

But at the time I also dreamed of being an astronaut!

 

1985 – 1988 An artistic blur

 

Modest studies, seasonal work and an ever present desire for artistic expression.

Painting, music, sculpture, sport, dance, singing, writing: only a magic wand would have helped me!

Art, a real puzzle!

Professional artistic direction without intrinsic conviction didn’t really satisfy me.

There was only one solution = Proceed by elimination – Back to drawing and more exactly to oil painting.

Nice but… 

 

1988 – 1991 A saving survivor

 

 

So I enlisted in the Army for three years at the Nunziatella military academy of the Administrative Commissariat of Nunziatella, Naples.

Various journeys followed throughout Italy (in Rome, Sicily, Veneto and Calabria) as driver and official photographer for military operations and various and varied ceremonies.

It was at the very beginning of this period that I fell in love with photography.

At the time, during my travels, I wanted to take some photos to send them to my mother: the postcards of the different places where I was never reflected the soul or the beauty of the sites.

I always found them missed!

With my compact camera, red I was determined to solve this problem: facing the Colosseum, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the traffic, a simple click, the flash.

It was not that complicated!

The disappointment was enormous: faced with all the failed photos, I felt totally ridiculous and moreover naïve!

Fortunately, in the heap, only one picture taken perfectly at random remained intact: framing, color, light.

A true miracle!

That’s when my curious mind made its way…

 

1991 – 1998 Finally, Homecoming!

 

Here I am, fired from the army to continue with the photographer project.

Three years of photographic experimentation allowed me to learn the basics.

Love catapults me to France where I discovered Black and White.

A long, rich and frustrating period looms in front of me: becoming a photographer yes but…

First of all, specialization.

No choice, it was necessary to proceed by elimination.

I photographed rally, motocross, cycling, Formula 3 competitions…

I tasted wildlife photography, underwater photography, journalistic reporting, still life’s.

Everything was very exciting, but what to choose to make a profession out of it?

In the meantime, in all of this, it was the discovery of black and white that fascinated me the most. 

Hours and hours of shooting and lab perfecting development and printing techniques: here I finally rediscovered, as at the age of five, the sensations of mastery of light.

1998 – The realization of one of my dreams! The creation of my studio! 

 

There is one subject that kept coming up over and over again, the Human.

What fascinates me the most is seeing the pleasure and enchantment that people experience in being photographed.

There is a real exchange between the photographer and the person photographed.

So that two dancers let themselves be swept away by the rhythm of the music.

With Black and White now in the skin, the choice was made very naturally!

Photographing man, woman, child, tall, short, thin, fat, smiling, shy extravagant, the question was: am I capable of photographing them?

The challenge is of utmost importance to me and I tackle it with each shot.

Aside from the children who are easy to photograph (just capture their spontaneity!). 

The adult model remains for me, and each time a major challenge.

So… Yeah… My Studio was born under this ambition.