STREET SOCIAL LANDSCAPE

ALEX COGHE
TO START

This book starts from a consideration: when subject matter is forced to be pigeonholed into labels and rules, there can be no
freshness of vision. Following the classic rules of composition can only lead to boring cliches. Following labels and pursuing the
genres is not good for our creativity and what we have to say through our photographs.

This book is not about composition or technique, as we are used to see in many photography manuals or blogs. Instead, it can be
considered a book about composition as I am using it in my work; it is a book about my approach to composition.

If you want to learn how I photograph, this book is not for you. My goal with this book is about opening the doors of perception to
other photographers, and I hope the readers of this book can get inspired and start to think to new ways of seeing and creating
images.

The goal with this book is not about reiterating the traditions compositional rules presented in thousand books. In this book I share
several notes I take during my study of photography, because my approach to composition comes from my study of cognitive
psychology, philosophy, literature.

In other words, my experience as a a continuous scholar shapes my photographic approach, from a compositional and narrative point
of view.

This means that this book is not the classic manual about the rules of composition. I think that to limit the entire subject of
composition to a set of rules means to limit our creativity, and creativity is the essence of photography when we have the goal to
speak with our inner voice and presenting our vision.

Photography is much more than a set of rules. To make photography is about how each photographer uses the “objects” in the frame.
Their position inside the frame, the justification on including them inside the frame, the way we arrange them. It is about how we use
light, color and contrast. It is about how we see the world and the way we represent it.



The form and how we solve the structure (composition) reveals the photographer way of seeing the world.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art. By supporting this idea it seems clear that
photography is a binary system, where the content is important, but so is the form. To say it otherwise it is important what we say but
it is also important how we say it. In photography this thought translates into an aesthetic research through which to produce a
certain type of approach.

Art, Facts, and Street Social Landscape Photography

In this book I approach photography as an art form.

And from doing this I always keep in mind a fact: I consider what I call Street Social Landscape a type of documentary photography.

Before entering the heart of this book I need to explain what I mean by Street Social Landscape:

Landscape photography is concerned with showing spaces of the world, sometimes vast and boundless, sometimes
microscopic.

Landscape photography in general captures the presence of nature, but it can also focus on structures created by man, on
elements of clear human origin that interrupt the natural landscape.

From Ansel Adams to Robert Adams the perception of the landscape has changed, which can therefore be divided into
two branches: the naturalistic landscape and the urban one.

In the urban landscape we often find denunciation when not a real political position; conceptual ambitions and intimate,
first-person reflections of the photographer can emerge.

For this reason I consider urban landscape photography to be part of documentary photography.

The roots of this type of photography date back to about a century ago.

World War I was a cultural, political, social and economic divide. Modernism had a profound effect on photography, while
progress transformed the landscape.

The greater presence of tonal details and subtleties led some photographers to accept these new technical opportunities,
deviating in fact from pictorialism, created by soft-focus lenses.

In the United States Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams, bearing in mind the landscape and nature
formed Group 64 in 1930.

Alfred Stieglitz, as a gallerist in New York, helped introduce modern art to the United States, and as a photographer, like his
friends, Paul Strand and Edward Steichen discarded methods of manipulation.

Using simple and simple techniques, he photographed clouds, trees and grass, with the aim of evoking experiences and
feelings comparable to the one that produces music.

With Robert Adams, a new conception of landscape made its way and was concerned with denouncing the progress of
cement in the spaces that until then were reserved for nature.

Complaint that sank in the personal experience of Robert Adams himself, who returned from the University of Los Angeles
to the places where he had grown up and where he used to walk immersed in nature with his parents, he was shocked to
see how changed the spaces were there too , with an advancement in construction that made California now like its new
home in New Jersey.

The 1975 photo exhibition "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" in the United States presented
a group of landscape photographers who worked in the 70s and 80s known as New Topographics.

In open contrast to the expressive chiaroscuro of Ansel Adams, the New Topographics photographers produced lighter and
more homogeneous prints, exalting the banal.

The construction of structures in the middle of the desert and elements of pop culture, cars, beer cans, petrol stations,
road signs had become important elements and subjects to be photographed and contributed to the creation of the
iconography of the new American west.

Thus the so-called New America, its demographic expansion and the progress of cement to the detriment of nature, were
the main theme of Robert Adams, Joe Deal, Stephen Shore and Lewis Baltz, among others

A further contribution, which brought even more this new landscape photography in art galleries, was undoubtedly William
Eggleston and at this point it is urgent to introduce the concept of aesthetics snapshot:

The aesthetic term of the snapshot or instant refers to a trend in artistic photography in the United States around 1963. The
creator of this aesthetic was Robert Frank, with his book of photographs "The Americans" published in 1958.

John Szarkowski, on the occasion of the NEW DOCUMENTS exhibition in which he brought to the fore the work of Garry
Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus at the MOMA in 1967, wrote: "images that seem to have a casual look, similar
to a snapshot and have a subject which seems surprisingly ordinary. [...] Winogrand said "When I photograph, I see life, I
don't care how the image will look".

A snapshot aesthetic that in addition to Eggleston certainly sees Stephen Shore as another important ambassador.

With the two books "American Surfaces" and "Uncommon Places" we can see how the first-person point of view
contributes decisively.

Shore photographs her feet as she rests in a motel bed, the dish she has in front of her, the green car she made the trip
with her partner.

There are elements of the journey that cannot fail to call to mind both the aforementioned Robert Frank and Jack Kerouak.
They are beat years, pop and immensely fertile for the creative of the image.

It appears evident that the altered landscape has become a photographic theme at that point.

The suburbs or if you prefer, suburbia, can be difficult for many to romanticize, and certainly many are unable to be
fascinated.

This is the peculiarity for which the genre remains incomprehensible to many, even after having conquered the halls of art
galleries. Eggleston's detractors (one who has a million-dollar picture) and Stephen Shore are not lacking.

The suburbs and the American landscape of the twentieth century are not the only territories explored by photographers. In
the 1980s we are witnessing an Italian photographic movement that should make us feel proud.

I refer to the Italian Landscape School, of which the greatest exponent is Luigi Ghirri.

The investigation of the territory through photography is actually the result of that precise historical, social and political
context.

The rampantism and the social ascent, which began in the 1980s and on which Reaganian hedonism undoubtedly weighs,
reflect on the observations of the Italian territory, almost like an action aimed at the recovery, at least on a spiritual and
intellectual level, of our roots, of our resources and assets, of our life in the province and why not, of the rural traditions of
our country.

But by avoiding postcard photography, the new Italian photographers portray the landscape in a new way, which certainly
has points in common with what has been the investigation of the west of American photographers. And therefore
proposing in part that banalist approach, perhaps precisely aimed at highlighting a territory that the Italian knows very well
and that, therefore, allows us to express the attachment to the territory of the province.

If Ghirri was undoubtedly the leading exponent and propelling element of the Italian School of Landscape, no doubt other
names interested in documenting the transformation of nature and urban space should be mentioned: Guido Guidi, Vittore
Fossati, Cesare Ballardini, Marcello Galvani, Jonathan Frantini, Francesco Neri, Luca Nostri, Cesare Fabbri.

Often when we refer to Italian photography we always talk about the usual names, those that have experienced the golden
age of Italian photojournalism as protagonists, but if I have to make a photographic and cultural movement purely Italian, I
affirm that the Italian School di Paesaggio was an autochthonous current with its own cultural references, which did not
refer to a model as in the case of our photojournalism which definitely looked to the French school.

Since December 9, 2017 to March 4, 2018, the Pescheria Visual Arts Center in Pesaro hosted the Qualsiasità exhibition in
which several photographic investigations carried out in the Romagna area from 1984 to the present were illustrated by the
work of many of the landscape photographers mentioned above.

From the title of the exhibition we can see the intellectual nobility from which the entire Italian landscape movement draws.

In fact, the term is inspired by one of the most important figures of Neorealism and translates into photography as a daily
glance, attentive to the minor aspects of the territory and interested in the immediate landscape, the one in which we are
and we live every day.

The photographs on display, all with a clear documentary style, provided a non-rhetorical description of places not taken
into consideration by the official iconography.

And exactly in this approach lies the undoubted merit of these photographers and of the entire movement. For a
documentation of the geography of the Italian territory, which obviously makes the historical, social and anthropological
value invaluable, to understand more about ourselves and the transformations undergone by the landscape.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the invention of photography revealed that cultures were ready to form knowledge, ideas
and new perceptions through optical images, mechanically produced and reproducible.

At the same time, another of the symbols of progress, the train, introduced an unprecedented speed of travel.

Images from faraway places influenced the perception of the world, defining differently even the way in which familiar
places were represented and lived.

The earth began to be increasingly perceived as a landscape, and the landscape met more and more in the photographs
and no longer only in the paintings.

However, photography was only in black and white.

So painting the landscape, even with the limits of the subjectivity of the pictorial experience, brought with it more elements
of in-depth study and information of a scientific nature than photography.

The painter Thomas Moran joined a scientific expedition in 1872. His Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park is not just a
beautiful painting.

In the expedition in which it was built they also counted with a photographer.

But of course the photographs were in black and white, and the role of Moran was therefore precious from the point of
view of scientific documentation because at that moment only a painter could capture the color.

And the color represented an important element, able to represent a wide range of information of the place.

In some way I am convinced that things have not changed since then: when the objective is documentary photography, it
is clear that to capture the truth we need color. The end justifies the aesthetics.

I have already stated how the representation of the urban landscape always has strong connotations and political
reflections.

Of which there are striking (and famous) example of the works of the New Topographics, in particular for their ability to
reflect the depredations of the natural landscape through the representation of the landscape altered by man.

In them you find a passionate social critique, in which the myth of the west is revived through new forms of reading,
derived from the disillusionment of the American dream, from a war lost in Vietnam, from the spreading pop culture.

Coca Cola cans and petrol station signs are the protagonists of a universe in which the desert and cars, the myth of travel
in American highways, become the promise of free experiences.

An undoubted romanticism, or rather a neo-romanticism, in which the vernacular marries the real nightmares of Psycho, of
American gothic, of the different perspective of an America still dreamy, but aware of its own cynicism.

William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, perhaps most of all, but also Joel Sternfeld: romanticism and irony together, in
which the naivety of the 50s clashes with the awareness of the reality of the 70s, celebrating memories of a past that
probably never existed really.

The ambiguity of approach of the works of the New Topographics becomes critical even of conceptual and postmodern art
itself.

The movement, assuming we can speak of a true artistic-cultural movement, will reflect an open disjunction with respect to
the conceptual art of the time, simultaneously invading, ironically, its art galleries.

The visual and approach reference is that of photography which I call Street Social Landscape, which in Italian we could
translate as Photography of Social Road Landscape even if it works better in English.

In it is the point of view of the photographer, committed to constructing the frame through his choices of objects to be
inserted into the frame and inevitably influenced by the operative choices concerning the disposition of this objects /
subjects, to reinforce the perception and therefore the semiotics of a given place.

Point of view that allows its photography to operate at different levels: personal, local, regional, national and global. Micro
and Macro.

We think how different is the perception of a given place taken at street level and the same taken up from the top, using a
drone.

In both cases we could collect and provide data for understanding and studying a given territory, but changing the point of
view and semiotics will certainly also change the perception and therefore the information itself of a given place.

This reveals how the point of view and the approach determine a different kind of understanding, of information that we
would obtain and therefore makes the interdisciplinary nature of landscape studies evident.

To make a parallel with writing, I want to go back to Wendy Harding's book: The Myth of Emptiness and the New American
Literature of Place.

The new "literature of places", says Harding in the first chapter of the book, has three necessities_

    Do not dwell on famous and iconic places, but rather on disinherited places.

    Questioning the polarizations between culture and nature, emptiness and living.

    Rewrite the earth and our relationship with it in a historical perspective.

The "writers of places" are, says Harding with a certain sense of formulation, "the new poets of an amnesic nation. To
break one or the other approach and to better suggest the hybridity and historicity of the place, these writers adopt an
aesthetic of complexity. This literary form invites, indeed requires, the reader's participation in the construction of new
ways of interpret the connection between people and the place. Scripting is defined as bimodal: it interrupts and connects,
deconstructs and reconstructs. The scripts form multi-center, multi-layered and multi-layered texts that resist the fixity,
authority and teleological orientation. In the post-modern and post-colonial space-time explorations, a patchwork of
discordant, partial and fragmentary stories moves official national accounts ".

Making the parallel with a certain approach to photography allows us to understand what is sought after by urban
photographers.

Although the use of photography for environmental attention is not a new concept, its contemporary importance is
undoubtedly not only a playful or artistic activity.

Creators of images, certainly, but also, thinkers of images, with the aim of expressing reflections on urbanism, on the
nature-man relationship, but also as evidence of a document both on the connections between nature and man and on the
condition of man in the places he built and lives.

The images in street social landscape or new landscape demonstrate a formal attention, and therefore reveal artistic
ambitions, but do not deny at the same time the focus and the documentary research with a clear social critique.

Because landscape photography is above all fundamental for understanding, developing and, possibly, improving a place.

Note: For further information, I recommend Photography and Landscape by Rod Giblett and Juha Tolonen

It is a book of criticism of landscape photography created through the collaboration between a photography writer and a
landscape photographer.

Starting from the frontier days of the American west, the subsequent popularity of landscape photography is exemplified
by images ranging from Carleton Watkins to Ansel Adams, from New Topographics to Richard Misrach.

Masters
Aaron Siskind

Bernd & Hilla Becher

Bob Thall

Carleton Watkins

Eugene Atget

Frank Gohlke

Gabriele Basilico

George Tice

Henry Wessel

Jem Southam

Joe Deal

Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Sternfeld

John Divola

John Gossage

John Humble

John Pfahl

John Schott

Lee Friedlander

Lewis Baltz

Luigi Ghirri

Michael Kenna

Paul Graham

Raymond Depardon

Richard Misrach

Robert Adams

Stephen Shore

Walker Evans

William Eggleston

In order to define what is the goal with Street Social Landscape I written a sort of manifesto. That doesn’t want to be a sort
of table of laws, and that everyone can feel free to follow or not follow.

THE NEW LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY MANIFESTO

⁃ The focus is the documentation of a place: it can be a town or a city, a small village, a desert, a forest

⁃ The new landscape photographer is interested to represent the place through a documentarist approach in an
attempt to understand the experience of the place

⁃ Through a dedication to the topic, concerned more to create a body of work rather than isolated images in order to
carry out a study of the place and the experience there

⁃ The work focuses on structures and the sense of place rather than on people, but at the same time can show a
documentation of the human condition

⁃ The photographs can focus on micro details or a broader view

⁃ The photographer can have a more objective approach or showing much of his vision and experience when making
photographs

⁃ It can be in black and white or color, with compact cameras or large format, using any process

⁃ Despite the documentaristic approach is evident, artistic ambition can often be revealed

⁃ Form and content at the service of understanding a place

⁃ Any place in the world can be photographed

This book is written for people who desire to make a certain type of photography as a revealing form exploring the world around us
and inside us. This book is based on studies carried out in recent years and that take into account different disciplines as philosophy,
cognitive psychology, geometry.

With my landscape photos in mind I started to think on the new book and what is the new approach I am pursuing. And here you go with
my project AMERICANA:

“Pictures should look like they were easily taken” Robert Adams

Complying with inclinations and perceptions. Derivative of a layer that has always permeated my vision, adopting a minimalist
approach and vision. Landscape Street Photography and not only, with documentation, but understanding the state of mind of the
moment to help weigh the atmosphere of space and time. So, necessarily, in color.

The project AMERICANA represents the sum of what I am and probably have always been as a photographer. To understand this we
need to back
in my beginnings as a photographer, at the age of 10 years, with an economical point & shoot, clearly a film camera, a Fujica. I started
as a color photographer, with cheap rolls, those of the consumer and certainly not professional, leaning on a development laboratory.
Making snapshots of urban glimpses and my family’s daily life.

This was me. This is still it.

In the last 10 years I have been a professional photographer. With no pretense of calling myself an artist or thinking of making art. Art is
not a necessity, if not from an intimate point of view. And apart from the fact that I hate the idea of calling myself an artist, I have
always invoked the importance of photography as a document, and the resulting idea has always been referred to as feeling more
identified with the term of concerned photographer.

From supporting the importance of photography in its role as testimony, document and memory, anyhow, I never denied that photographs
represent an opportunity of expressing emotions, feelings, and opinions. In this sense photography is always a political act.

Documentary Photography is based on facts, on capturing reality and recording things as they are. Art is is concerned with interpreting
reality rather than with capturing reality as is. Factual and Representation are the constant dichotomy that also affects a document that as
far as we can stick to a given objectivity it will always and in any case be altered by the hand that produces it.
When we think of a good photo in general we come to mind the photograph of a master whom we appreciate because we have studied it,
it has become familiar and therefore welcoming, even when it appears unattainable.

A mental operation that commits us to research into the archive that we hold in our memory and that requires an effort aimed at
remembering that image. I sometimes ask my students to remember a photograph they particularly like, to try to describe it to me as
much as possible, explaining to me how many more details come to mind.

It is a very useful mental path that leads those who are remembering the image to understand better not so much about photography, but
rather about themselves and what they consider important in a photographic image. The cognitive aspect that leads us to be attracted to
certain photographs and, before that, to certain visual messages is the basis of what we will be as photographers and what we will be led
to tell.

Moreover, this mental exercise is useful for training the brain in that fundamental task of reading an image, which will then become
simpler when the photograph is physically under our eyes.

Doing this, of these distracted times and volatile memories, becomes a gym for our perceptive ability.

And it will be very useful, at a later stage, as the creator of images, becoming, in fact, a precious tool in our photographic approach.

The question to be asked is: what do we want from our photographing? Do we want it to be art, document or what? Do we want to use it
just to stay healthy? Do we want to do it to communicate something we have inside and feel we deserve to be shown to others?
Depending on the answers we

will give, we will have a clearer picture of the situation, and perhaps we will actually be starting to listen to our inner voice, the one that
allows us to express what WE have to say.

I both as a teacher and as a content proposer, both as a writer and as a photographer, I believe that photography and words walk together
and the more we know how to use one and the other and the more we will be able to create interesting content. No, I'm not talking about
using descriptions or titles to give strength to an image, but when we aspire to express concepts through our images, we will also need to
know how to describe and talk over our photography. Just think of a synopsis of a photographic project. When we are already projected
towards a photographic project the only images will not suffice.

And this even with the awareness that the act of photographing leads to sensations that often cannot be described with words, in this
sense a metaphysical component comes into play, linked to atmospheres and perceptions, for example certain intimate childhood
memories, something we cannot or cannot grasp with words, but remains suspended inside us, hidden within us, real but impalpable.

The ambiguity of photography is part of his magic.

It surprises his own author.

The more we focus on conceptuality, the more indispensable the word will be. And the word, which goes neither dodged nor disgusted, is
today a saving oasis, which dissociates us from the oppression of non-thought, from shooting and not thinking, from that extreme
aestheticism that conditions, impoverishes and consumes shared photography today on the net, flattening it into the banality of
homologation, of visual homogenization, of easy consent. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people are reading, let alone wanting to read
about photographs.

When a photographer rewards us with a long explanation, with a wise essay of the path that led him to a certain work not only highlights
the research carried out and the knowledge of the proposed theme, but actually acts by digging into deeper channels, and this indicates
respect in that particular relationship that is established between author and user.

The most outstanding authors of each art have been and are distinguished people, capable of engaging in interesting discussions in many
fields. I'm sorry but for this reason I can't and I don't want to believe the ignorant and mute photographer, the one who has nothing to say
if he can't do it through his photos.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Stephen Shore, Carmelo Bene, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paolo Villaggio, the first names coming to my mind, names of
artists that went beyond their specialization and that show how much culture, knowledge and well-speaking leads the author towards a
different dimension, much more stimulating, multifaceted, innovative.

At this point, perhaps, we can understand how improvised photography that arrives proposed by those who do not have certain
processing abilities remains mediocre, without a future, comparable to a crust in a neighborhood market.

Today more than ever we must expect that there is substance behind photographs. Or better yet, that there is someone who is not
throwing things at random, but who shows knowledge and culture that allows him to go beyond the aesthetic result.
Joel Sternfeld, great master of color photography, says that photographers must choose their own palette, as painters do.

What is certain is that color photography has always undergone the taste and preferences of the photographer. Think of the saturated
colors of Werner Herzog, the yellowish and greenish dominants of Stephen Shore, the full-bodied reds of William Eggleston then taken
up again by Wim Wenders in the exploration of the American West that finds its archetype in the film "Paris, Texas".

Moreover, the natural vision of the world can also be monotonous and devoid of that personality which helps us to recognize the style of
a photographer.

Today, photography is above all digital, photographers can experiment much more, no longer bound to the results of the films and
processes, thanks to the controls with a post-production software. Several camera manufacturers offer their jpegs with various filters, but
the danger is just around the corner: the risk of finding a visual homogenization is even more exaggerated and probable.

It is up to us photographers, through study and I dare to also say good taste, knowing how to choose our way of narrating and this goes
through the photographers who prefer color with the choices that are made both at the time of exposing and photographing and later, in
post production. I photograph directly in jpeg, which is not however how many mistakenly think "let the camera do".

First of all because you work is more similar like once was with the positive film, because the jpeg allows you less flexibility in the file
management, and exactly for this reason the choice must be

careful and well thought out before shooting. Many cameras today allow you to change the parameters of white balance for example, and
get as close as possible to what is our personal vision.

I'm here to write these thoughts that are best known to myself. Object of reflection and self-analysis, they reflect part of my concerns that
I have taken a long time in photographing in color. Then it happens to find boxes of old photos: dominant red, green, even blue. A
chemical exasperation that didn't even depend on us and that fills memories of atmospheres and fills them with unreality, in the middle
between dream and real life.
The shots of my father in Sardinia with a Russian and red camera, for reddish photos of an even redder earth. Rocks smoothed by the
wind that promise desert, while the smell of myrtle caresses the nostrils. Cork and salt. Flashbacks that I can't grab. It's memory and
vision.

Acid is the photograph I learned to love. And the analysis becomes revelation. About the photograph in this text...

William Eggleston stated “I am at war with the obvious.” I can’t agree more. Banality and the sublime charm of everyday life inspired a
lot of artists, and when you study, you metabolize and make yours a certain way of thinking through images, your photography becomes
different.

The snapshot aesthetics continues to heavily influence my work. I am not and I will never be a photographer of perfection. I want to
continue having fun photographing, with the eyes of a child. Maybe this is the reason why I alway preferred compact cameras, since the
days of the film.

In the monotony of this shot is its beauty. A monotony slightly broken by red lights. I wanted in this way, I don’t offer you any possibility
to observe the landscape beyond. You have to stay there. You need to ask yourself about this car, its old age, its state of neglect. I wanted
something graphic for this shot.

Emphasizing the color of the asphalt, similar to the car, to the point that in the upper part it almost seems to be diluted to become one.

While I was photographing I immediately thought of making a print of it, and now it is: I released a dibond print for the ones that would
a photograph by me in their office or home.

Have you ever wondered how photography can represent material? I do, and I do it constantly. For example, I don't do anything with
photographs that are just figurines, and I care that you can live an experience to the point of feeling yourself inside the photo. This thing
has become for me a priority of intent that inspires me to photograph certain things and to ignore others. For example photographing, just
to do it, a series of people walking in front of me appears to be a sterile operation, and I like it when I manage to solve a composition
through an aesthetic reason that supports the content.

In the material, and in an almost tactile experience, I find refuge as an observer and creator of images. In this sense, with this mental and
creative approach, the studies done on certain landscape photographers who are or were well aware of how different the photographic
medium was for example from the pictorial, or television or cinematographic medium are revealing to me. In the awareness of the partial
truth of photography, as far as we can explore with our subjectivity but also with an aseptic attitude, almost as an extraterrestrial one that
is suddenly called to record scenes without showing emotions, we can understand how a place can be a revealing heart of a society and
therefore of the space that surrounds us. And the heart of the document is there. A document that can be passionate or algid, but always
testimony of something and therefore useful to others to understand. The picture that bears a lot of information is the one I like most,
which I study, admire and try to do.
Art, Facts, and Street Social Landscape Photography

I repeated a lot of times on this blog that landscape photography is not just one, and the concept has expanded, making manifest
a creative urgency that involves reflections on essence and existence in a place at the moment of taking a photograph of what is in
front of us.

Limiting landscape photography to the idea of a stunning Scottish scenery means ignoring or simply not taking into
consideration years of history and artistic movements within photography but also a whole interdisciplinarity that involves
painters, architects, urban planners, philosophers and why not, even writers.

 
There are 3 aspects I would highligt about an enlarged concept of landscape photography:
 
1. Personal sphere
 
Through this evidence in photography we can achieve an exploration determinated to use the camera as an instrument of
perception, presenting and representing the self and the external world. By approaching the medium in this way we can give
visual expression to concepts of reality. reality is never objective. There are recent studies of quantum science which seem to
reveal how our whole existence is determined by our consciousness. I think this is pretty interesting to consider when we
approach photography, because as far as we can photograph things thinking of doing a work of pure objective recording the very
essence of being on the other side of the scene, framing and therefore choosing what to include, we operate always a choice that
will determinate the reality of that image, the sensations and the feelings generated.

The dualism between Me, the photographer and the scene in front of Me always determines what the image is: its essence.
 
2. Contemplation
 
The natural environment is certainly a point of departure for contemplation. We are physically there looking at the place where
we are and this defines the  contemplation of the place, the objects present there, contributing to our personal perception of the
place, the mood and in fact our state of mind of being there. This fact invokes the analysis of a mental model of landscape
wealready hold, acquired through our experience of existence and partly built from our culture, from our visual education, from
the visions that have been nourished by cinema, music, our pictorial and photographic knowledge, but without forgetting the
power of memory, memories of certain events that have characterized our life, sometimes even certain tactile and olfactory
sensations.

 
The contemplation of what is in front of us and around us in that moment informs and determinates how we experience the
reality, how we can acquire notions of place.
 
3. Documentation
 
The documentation of everyday surely is one of the main concerns when we photograph (as documentary photographers). If the
idea of visual diary and the essence of esploration inside and outside ourselves is important and defines the ontology of what our
actions are as photographers, we can’t forget the importance of the photos we make as a document and an opportunity for social
reflection. The conceptual aspect determinated by the personal sphere and the contemplation however, it doesn’t take up space to
the documentation that is the informative of any photograph and where we can include our point of view and therefore also
present certain social and political criticisms.

 
 

At a certain point of the history of photography the biographical landscape emerged with great photographers like Stephen
Shore and William Eggleston. Apart from bringing the conceptual of everyday photography into the art galleries, their work is
remarkable as a fundamental contribute to aesthetically convey ideas about America on the road in color, presenting an idea of
reality certainly more relevant than what was realized before in black and white, also from respected and recognized masters.
To acknowledge the work of any color photographer  we should note how he manages to do so in his pictures. Joel Sternfeld
stated in a article criticizing Stephen Shore’s work that  a colour photographer should choose a palette, exactly as painters would
choose theirs.

As we look at the work of professional photographers, we can see how a limited color palette isrevealing maturity and a personal
vision.

By analyzing part of my most recent work I can see a coherence in what I look for from my photography:

CASE 1
CASE 2

CASE 3
CASE 4

CASE 5

The recurrence of beige is not accidental.  The monotony of the color of many of my photos traces precisely what is an urban vision of
everyday life and at the same time the photographic approach I want to remark: I don’t want hyper-saturated color.


In any case, the colors are not cold and show how I see the world. When I dress my Ray-Ban the vision tends to yellowish. I also
believe that our photography should reflect who we are, with our history, including the visual that fed our soul. I still have in
mind the photos of my father in Sardinia.
Rocky areas, almost desert. Then the Mexico factor: its light, the color…sometimes it seems to be in the 50s, sometimes the 70s. 

In American movies, Mexico is often represented with an ocher cast.

 
I think is pretty interesting to consider I photograph mostly with Fujifilm cameras in digital, and I choose particular settings in
order to achieve the result I want. By photographing directly in jpg is very important to set up the white balance as well as the
film simulation. But in the case 4 the photograph has been realized with the Pentax K-S1, recently purchased, and also for that
camera I made choices to get closer to what my vision is.
By using power lines inside a photographic composition is useful to give impact to an image. Remember? Our brain is used to
recognize geometric figures, and this for sure includes lines. In this image we can see a lot of lines, horizontal, vertical, diagonal.
From the point of view of the urban observation I think is a good image. 

The formal point of view is sufficiently respected. The composition appears balanced: the human subjects on the left outside, the
human subject on the right inside, the poles outside and inside.
Alec Soth calls “the pure experience of looking at the world”. It includes randomness and an organic order which can be
revealed at any time.

The photographer’s job is to pay attention to things that others don’t notice or simply don’t care.
 
“I’m photographing something that is the random leavings of many forces. Someone throws a cigarette there, it rains and a little
soil washes away, somebody else drops something else a week later. All these things are the ‘leavings’ and the results of people, of
natural forces, of ageing and weathering, and there’s a kind of randomness to it. And so one possible way of using photography is
to try to take a picture that finds some kind of organic order in it that allows it to be almost as random-looking as it is, but
because of the way the frame is placed on it, a viewer can still feel like they’re seeing an underlying order. Maybe this is
oversimplifying things but it’s my best attempt at finding the order that actually exists there.” – Stephen Shore source: https://
artreview.com/features/ar_summer_2019_feature_stephen_shore/

By breaking down the image we realize how the situation inside the window is solved in a square shape, it has almost a monitor
function, like a window on the inner world of the Starbucks, while life also flows out. The left side represents the dimensionality
of the real world. On a formal level we know how a square frame turns out to be more static on a perceptive level than on
rectangle frames. The action is outside, not inside.

Taking advantage of the choice to include the part on the left I offer a place to go. Just try to imagine to make a total different
photograph. I could focus the attention only on the starbucks window. A total different picture. But in that case I obtained a
picture more flat, obvious and genuinely boring, deprived of all the perceptions I have discussed so far. Getting closer  would
have taken away the evidence of the lines, so essential to the idea of what pushed me to photograph and that I wanted to
represent.

 
 


On my Italian blog fotoreportando I wrote:

“We photograph. And it is expected to always propose a great content. Sometimes it is not happening. Sometimes it is a simple study to
understand possibilities. Insights that will allow them to be used in the future. For new ideas. And other photos.”

After that I shared the picture on my instagram and facebook. Someone understood the intent. I already talked about the use of
central point in photography on this blog. I use it often to solve the structure and building my image. This time the intent was
abut using the line in the middle in order to separate the frame in 2, giving the illusion to have 2 photos: 
This made me immediately think to the half frame film camera Olympus Pen. This is a case where the form definitely takes over
content. Breaking down the image:

I point out how the use of the perspective distortion of the 28mm lens works fine in this photograph.

On an exquisitely operational level, I think it is stimulating to find details even of interiors. I appreciate a lot of photographers
mastering this.
First of all, a bit of context for this photograph: realized in the barrio on Friday, 08:22 am. A very early morning schedule, but I
was going to make my coverage of the via crucis.

When I have seen the scene I was attrcted by the particularity of the building,  a very bizarre building with those two small
windows up there, and also played to give back, because of the point of view, a feeling of three-dimensionality. In this sense I
consider fundamental the shadows. We have one part illuminated by the sun and the other face in the shade. We have the yellow,
the blue and the red, primary colors. We have a human subject, which returns the sense of proportion, making the structure I
photographed even more evident. comunicating a lot about this Mexican building in a barrio.


This photo imposes distance because the building is fundamental in this landscape photo.
 
I was attracted by the light too and from the sense of isolation of the old lady passing by.
 
 
 
The photograph can be absolutely included in my ongoing project AMERICANA. As my readers know AMERICANA is a
project focused on that street social landscape I am proposing. AMERICANA was exhibited at the Kalkata International
Phootgraphy Festival on February and will be published soon in CITIES magazine.
 
Yesterday I read an opinion in the facebook page of the collective LA STRADA where I proposed it, that distance would kill this
photograph. I have already replied to the critique, but I think can be useful to share it also here, for my readers:
 
I shun this belief that everything must be done at close range, also because distance is relative. Relative to the subject. In this case
the main subject is the building, where the human element is important, but exactly like a old photo of Gianni Berengo Gardin
where the photo is a landscape photograph and the human element very small because of the distance contributes to the story,
making it not just a landscape photo, but a landscape photo with a documentary value, a story.
 
At one point, and above all the street photographers of these times, they have passed between them the phrase made and
borrowed from something else, Capa’s phrase that if you are not close enough it is not a good photo. I disagree. First of all
because I’m doing a street social landscape project called AMERICANA of which this image is part. I disagree because taking a
photo at a distance is much more complex than doing it, as one believes closely, because it requires attention for the acquisition
that we often see only one person and nothing more closely.
 
Something that today, of these times of visual culture built on simplistic decalogues and regulates word of mouth on the web, is
branded as a bad photo by those who think they know. The idea that photography is only one and that it must be standardized to
universal codicils is typical of these times. My photograph is just an example, but I could make 100000 of it.
Certain uniformers would throw Luigi Ghirri and Lee Friedlander into the garbage at one stroke. And years of photographic
history, in the name of something they have read about some small blog. Because that is the level of their visual training. They
have misinterpreted a phrase by Robert Capa that actually did not refer to physical distance, and with that they go on. This is
why we see a chasing without stopping at closest range, with characters but not photographs. It is the paparazzi approach that
has taken over, but don’t try to ask them to analyze the photos they have taken: the question bothers them and they respond that
the photographs should not be explained.
I don’t believe them.
Rather, I am interested in photography that is not all the same, that has something to communicate, that reflects suggestions and
introspections. I like to observe how a photographer has solved a photographic equation, of how he used the moment and the
situation to generate a story. I like to look at those photographs where there is information. Photography as a document.
 
I hope that you also go beyond the clichés of the web. Because photography does not deserve to be trapped in this
elementaryization. Just yesterday I shared another picture:
 

A completely different photograph, but useful to show that I can photograph subjects close, very close or distant. It depends by
the situation. And it depends from a fundamental aspect: the INTENT.

What was I supposed to do for you? How would you have solved the first photo? I hope the answer  not the usual old lady at close
range that we see in a lot of today’s street photography. I don’t care and it’s not my intention and intent at all. I’m not even
interested in street photography today, especially what  is often proposed and how I explained in a recent post on this blog I am
making documentary photography.
 
Many live on statements of others and that of Capa is one of the most abused. It is believed that good photography is only close-
up photography, when every good photograph should have its own reason and respond to its own needs, how a given scene is
solved and its motivations. I have been dealing with this for some time in this blog, so I decided to do it again for this photo as
well. Too bad to see, however, that there are people who are unable to distance themselves from the clichés and claptrap. If you
ask them to read an image (their image) they admit they don’t know how to do it.

Apparent distances that are not really such.I really am in the barrios, since I also live in one, which is very different from making
photowalks in downtown.
 
There is a typical trend of today’s street photography to go out for a photographic walk, and everything is concentrated
(reduced) to a sort of manhunt armed with a camera. I believe that photography is much more than this, and learning to see also
means not always pulling out the usual Capa phrase, which is commonplace, and by the way that phrase has also been quite
misunderstood because I believe Capa dwas not referring as much to a physical distance as to emotional involvement. I don’t
care to flatten myself on a unique vision and approach and I don’t follow the rules that are passed on those “no-readers” stupid
blogs with the usual 10 tips to make better photographs.
 
Anyone who knows my photography knows that I can photograph at a palm of the subject’s nose as if from a distance, but
photography is not measured with centimeters, I leave those things to the idiot writer (influencer?) arguing  street photography is
80% balls: that said from those who photograph only in downtown, sounds ridiculous and presumptuous.
 
Nowadays there is a great lack of visual culture: every time I ask for a reading of an image they draw back. Often it happens that
when faced with the request to make a selection for a project to be submitted and write an essay about it, they go to black cris. I
am very convinced that photographing from afar is more difficult than taking close-up photographs: once the psychological
block that so many shy guys have has been overcome is not that complicated. Photography is not about showing how brave you
are. Photography is a matter of form and content.
 
If one aims something more important, a photograph should not be just “the photo of one I met” or “the photo of people passing
by” because even when people go by, there should be some more than that motivation. Motivations both from a formal and
purely content point of view.
“If the photographer could not move his subject, he could move his camera. To see the subject clearly – often to see it at all – he
had to abandon a normal vantage point, and shoot his picture from above, or below, or from too close, or too far away, or from
the back side, inverting the order of things’ importance, or with the nominal subject of his picture half hidden.

From his photographs, he learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed.

He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of things, and the these mysterious and evasive
images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful”.

John Szarkowski: The Photographers Eye, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009.

I took this picture in Oaxaca in 2016. My observation point was from a bridge. It is a busy frame, showing everyday life close to
the Central de Abastos (general market) where there are also taxi and bus central stations. When we solve a composition of this
kind we should be careful to have most of the elements that work with a rhythm, creating a harmony.

In the picture from a documentaristic point of view we have a lot of elements giving informations to the observer. This is a main
goal for a documentary photographer. When I am working for agencies I need to have photos responding to questions, the ones I
call the rule of W:

Where

When

What

Who

Why

It is a journalistic priority, and you understand a lot of things when you are called to ask those questions. It is something that
leads you to review a lot in your way of photographing.

It takes a lot of effort to make a photograph that has meaning. And it defines the values of the photographs offered in the world.
The contemplation of things as they are Without error or confusion Without substitution or imposture is in itself a nobler thing Than a
whole harvest of invention.

Francis Bacon, philosopher [Dorothea Lange tacked this quotation to her darkroom door, where it remained for over 40 years]

To show the project starts from the past: this is a photograph I realized in Los Angeles in Oct. 2011
We already accepted that Social landscape in photography refers to the human-made space in a photograph. From different
phenomenological perspectives and from an ontological point of view it is interesting to observe the relationship that elapses
between habited space and our social being in the world.  Space is something for which room is made. A Building produces things
as locations. Heidegger proposed a topological model for thinking about the relationship between people and the landscape as a
matter of the awareness of being in and abelonging to the world.

The space is existential, and existence is spatial in that it opens onto an outside. The perception of space and the environment,
like everything else, is an event in nature.

For a Phenomenology of the Urban Landscape

The human body provides a mediation point between thought and the world. And the world and the subject reflect and flow into
each other,  through the existence of the body on being in the world.

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD is given by:

Object

Subject

Nature

Consciousness

Where thehe body constitutes a way of relating to, perceiving and understanding the world.

Subjectivity and objectivity connect in a dialog producing a place. 

Topography and Physiography of the land  and Thought (cognition) produce an  intelligible landscape.

 
The geographical experience begins in places, reaches out to others through spaces, and creates landscapes for the human
existence.

The photographic studio that I’m conducting in supermarket parking can be used to better understand the nature of the urban
landscape and its importance for producing documentary photographs.
 
The somatic space is a space of habitual and unselfconscious action and is the space of sensory experience and bodily
movement.The perceptual space is the egocentric space perceived and encountered by individuals. It includes the individual
perception of distances and directions, natural objects and cultural creations. This space is always relative and qualitative. It is a
space of personality, of encounter and emotional attachment. This means that  involves the feelings and memories.

The boundaries are of major significance in structuring existential space. Boundaries create distinctions and marking out social
oppositions. The presence of boundaries, natural or artificial may be of major significance inside the frame, influencing heavily
the entire structure and meaning of the photograph.


The architectural space plays a fundamental role in the perceptual space. The cognitive space provides a basis for reflection and
theorization with regard to understanding the others and ourselves, the world around and inside us. It is the ‘space’ of this
discussion and analysis.

With a social and anthropological goal, the street social landscape I am proposing takes these considerations into account,
focused on existences of human beings. The parking lot in supermarkets give me an opportunity to create a social reflection
become theatre of the everyday, allowing me to create compositions where the landscape element is not secondary to the human
subjets.
Street Photographer intent:

The street photographers have taken pictures of people who are going about their business unaware of the photographer’s presence.
They have made candid pictures of everyday life in the street. That, at its core, is what street photography is.  – Bystander: A History of
Street Photography by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz (1994)

Social Landscape Photographer intent:

Social landscape photographers refer to the human-made space in a photograph: from adopting the snapshot aesthetic and repudiating
the formal and the concept of beauty the main focus is about documenting the human condition through the reflection and the visual
observation of the urban settings, the places that man lives and populates.

Landscape photography is very popular, but the idea is that by showing human subjects and what people are doing and
experiencing represents the best for serious photographers. This fact is so wide spread that there is a statement that photos with
human subjects and faces will be always will always be remembered more. There is no doubt that who matters more than where.

So why would I consider an image showing only the land? As a street social landscape photographer, as you can see in my project
AMERICANA, my documentation is focused on the human condition in the barrios of Mexico, in particular Mexico City and
some parts of the states of Mexico (EDOMEX) with an observation about the changes of the urbanscapes over a longer or shorter
time, but also offering evidence of similarity with the large neighboring country, namely the United States of America.

The everyday life is the main subject I am focused to observe through my photography, and I am interested to do it through the
approach of street and repeat, by photographing also the same place and presenting the little differences between a day and some
days after.

I don’t deny that this kind of approach can be a subtle evidence in narcissism: by photographing the space in front of me and
around me, I am photographing myself and my everyday life. This is very much emphasized by the fact that the formal attention
of most of the photographs wants to present however a certain attention and a certain rigor in presenting the world in which I
live. The same choice of color and a more truthful (but not objective) approach further clarify how the interest is linked to a form
of communicating to others what I see and how I see it. With regard to this, the chosen form is the use of the snapshot aesthetic,
where the frames need to appear casual in order to present the everyday.
I am a documentary photographer. And I am a concerned photographer. My approach is never tied to a concept of beauty. I
believe my observation is really political and critical, and this despite I firmly believe we can find the beauty also in a degraded
landscape. If I am photographing a certain place with certain environmental degradation I am clearly sending a political
message.

The question for me is not and can never be an observation of man as an end in itself: I am not photographing people to show
how good I am as a photographer. I think that is a very poor motivation and it would be like watching my balls constantly. I
know there are a lot of photographers chewed by their disproportionate ego, but this would be really miserable if I had to
practice it.

By speaking of Street Social Landscape I want to make a difference with certain trends of current photography, in particular
with the so called street photography. Street Social Landscape as definition achieves to include the intent of both, the street
photographers and the social landscapers.

In fact I think the street social landscape affirms an idea of content abundance.  Whether I am photographing a desolated
parking lot or a busy street, anything is interconnected, documenting the human society in its entirety, without foreclosures or
mandates.

If we start to really look at what the street social landscape can reveal, we can understand more of the man. Of his influence on
the environment and the world around him.
There is no form outside of interpretation.

The formal orders are human structures and perceptions.

We can think about it for days and nothing will change about this truth: the representations (because any photograph is a
representation to speak with Barthes) are charged with meanings coming from the personal identity and cultural background of
the photographer and then given to an audience, to an observer, and this always involves personal, social and cultural ideas.

In the approach that I have the cancellation, or almost, of everything that contributes to making a photo excessively digital is a
conscious choice that takes into account what we are used to today to an excessive sharpness of the images to the point that we
almost do not recognize as valid a film photography.
 

The landscape contributes to give our sense of the world: this is a fact that we can’t deny and this implies a great social
responsability about our work. This is the reason I think photography is a political act. And maybe this is exactly why
photographers are considered a menace by the power and governments of the world.
 

 
Joel Sternfeld has been always interested to investigate through his work on utopia and distopia, and I think this is particularly
relevant on how altered landscape photography can generate ideas and critical thought, and of course a complaint through an
ironic dissonance, a particular point of view, an inclusion of an object. I always considered Robert Adams photography extremely
politic. Environmental observation and the open criticism of the world of progress, the advancement of cement in to the
detriment of natural reserves dimension an apparently conceptual photograph in the sense of fine art. But really we are looking
to a documentary photograph.
 

Why we are making photos? Are we supposed to be photographers investigating society or not? Do we make photos only for an
aesthetic and beauty reason or rather for raising questions or making statements?

 
About being concerned photographers Mario Dondero was very careful to differentiate the photographers who are so, and the
ones busy just to make photos to elevate themselves. I believe the same.
 
“The idea that the more transformed or ‘aestheticized’ an image is, the less `authentic’ or politically valuable it becomes, is one that
needs to be seriously questioned. … To represent is to aestheticize: that is, to transform. It presents a vast field of choices but it does not
include the choice not to transform, not to change or alter whatever is being represented. It cannot be a pure process in practice. This
goes for photography as well as for any other means of representation.” – David Levi Strauss “Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography
and Politics”

I found this scene in Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz, a town and municipality in Oaxaca.  I was there for the first time in my life,
and it was the first shot taken after only five minutes. I question myself a lot about my photos, and about my approach with the
documentary value inside my photography. 


I am always focused on preserving the authentic image of reality, trying to capture what is interesting to me and what is
happening suddenly and for few instants in front of my eyes, and of course the classic skills of composition in visual arts are part
of me, acting almost unconsciously, but the moment will give me the ultimate appearance, the result of the photo.


To get a sense of a photograph is a political decision: it is always speaking about who you are as a photographer, and of course as
an individual with your ideas and cultural background.
Clearly if I am putting a pole almost in the middle of the frame I’m performing a risky operation. Even more if I am hiding
human subjects behing the pole. There are photographers arguing poles on the street kill composition, but you know, world is
nice because is various. When I am on the street I am just focused on the essence of the place and it is important to me being able
to capture energy, a particular tension. Photography never will be to me to make pretty pictures.

From photographing a place you don’t know and where you are for the first time, the risk of smashing increases. There is a
particular adrenaline flowing in your veins, and although the state of Oaxaca is fairly safe everywhere you can’t be certain that
everyone will accept photography, especially in places where they’re not so used to seeing people with cameras, taking pictures of
people.
 
In my photography I try to include many elements of a place. This is because my focus is offering many informations in order to
get an understanding and some use of my photos, a documentary value that can be precious over the years. My photography, like
the one of all of us, clearly presents my personal narrative and vision, but I am not interested to make something just focused on
me. I like the photographers able to present also themselves and their personal values but avoiding being excessively closed in
their ego, because photography to me is essentially about documenting the world around us.

 


Photography has changed the perception of travel itself

 
I back to write on this blog after a week where I was busy with my photo expedition in Oaxaca.
 
Another trip that changed me again, and I’m sure the mutation was happening even while I was taking this picture, somewhere
on an American highway. Think about it, even taking a picture changes us because any photograph we made is a journey inside
and outside ourselves.

I’m talking about photography and changes. My vernacular takes philosophical routes. Meeting poetry in the asphalt. In the sun
that burns my face and above all my tattooed arm.

And the caresses of the rays that produce reflections on the glass become pure lyricism. And the asphalt poetry is full of
adventure promises. In the daylight I meet evening suggestions.
I learned how in life is important to be an hellraiser, and music is my fuel. I have consumed myself in front of a pen and paper
and now, for years now, there is also the camera with me, which allows me the journey.
 
I have something from you, directly from the mountain of the American trip:
1) Never trust to something you can’t photograph.
2) Never trust completely in something that has been already photographed.
3) Beware of too much enthusiasm during a journey, it can happen something bad or simply stupid.
4) Never believe the trip is a safety trip. Never.
5) Do not wear excessively tight pants (this should be a universal rule).
6) Never take pictures of something you are not interested at all.
7) Never have a weird behaviour: remember that you have a camera with you and you are already weirdo for this.
 
Yeah, the last one was suggested by the consideration that in Oaxaca I counted something like 10 dudes maximum with a camera.
Cameras are disappearing, guys…or at least most now use mobile phones: the most need pictures to share immediately and not
interested to print at all. It is sad, but is true.
 
And remember that any journey is another kind of trip. Never is the same. It is a condition. Mental and physical. Maybe is
energy or something linked to our consciousness. Or the gravitational waves formuled by the most famous Albert. Don’t know.
Any place is always different. Its vibe and even its aspect. I believe this. All the trips made in the same spots make me think this.
And this influences how we will live that experience in the space-time. Photography, our photography will be influenced, of
course, by this.

 
Photography can be a bastard blade the more life is.

 
I am coloring the asphalt of my life in pastel shades. And the sun continues to burn hot.
 


“You changed camera or eyes…”

I received this comment recently on facebook. Honestly I think the evident change in my photography is under everyone’s eyes.
When I stated that one cycle was finished and another opened, I didn’t say it to say.

The process has been particular, passing through many phases, and the certainty after 10 years of career as a professional
photographer I needed to take another step. And this step was encouraged to look back, inside myself and how I started with
photography, when I was just 10 years old: in color, making urban landscapes and portraits of the everyday, about the ordinary
people and ordinary life. So the muted pastel color palette became close to my visual proposal,  and it could not be otherwise,
because I was born photographically watching and admiring the pioneers of 70s color fine art photography, in particular
Stephen Shore and William Eggleston. The discovery of Luigi Ghirri took place later, but not less important for my visual
training. 


Over the years I have obviously added a lot of my studying the masters, and black and white became the expansive form in
which I identified myself most. Despite the transfer in Mexico and also because I was not satysfied by the digital color. Times are
changes, and I am changed.


“Color is the real world. The job of the color photographer is to provide some level of abstraction that can take the image out of
the daily.”- Joel Sternfeld

This statement which appears contradictory changed my perception of what I could do. Joel Sternfeld work is political: this is
the difference of his landscapes respect to Shore, to make an example. While in the work of Ghirri we can observe a political
commitment in his approach to investigate the Italian suburbs, who have redesigned the idea of the Italy landscape.


While the subject matter may change and of course the camera may change and  the approach may change, I think my work is
still hel together by a consistent and coherent vision: I am still exploring and photographing the human condition of the barrios.
As my blog in the technique and inspiration columns shows my study of photography and visual arts in general incorporat
geometry into my compositions, trying to integrate also a  coherent color scheme.

Through the project AMERICANA I developed an approach that has changed during this time, especially from an aesthetic
point of view. Thanks to AMERICANA I have seen the changes that over the course of time have fed, in all these months, a
change in my proposal, and now I can see how this process shaped my photography, sparking my vision, and it unifies everything
I am doing. It is not just a narrative approach, but the essence of myself as a photographer.

The color palette is not just an aesthetic decision, but the index of a feeling: when I photograph on the street, I need to oberve not
just the composition and the content. Color imposes formal choices even more rigid and in this sense there is a greater difficulty.
The atmosphere of the place, the mindset, the perceptions derived by the experience of staying in a determinated place,
everything contributes to creating a certain image.

 
On instagram, under the photograph you see,  I read a comment:

“This made me stop scrolling and have good look around the picture. Really awesome! It’s so full of life.”

I think that today in this continous scrolling of social networks, if we achieve to produce something like this also with a person is
a good result. But going beyond the comment I think is very interesting how the perception of an image derives for all of us from
how much life we absorb both as visual creators and as users of an image.

Even our attitude towards an event shows our attitude and therefore our character.
 
Look at this:
 

On facebook I written: “Yesterday I met this guy at the tianguis. He was holding a meter of crocodile and I couldn’t not
photograph it. I asked him how much he would grow up, and he replied that the breed is up to a meter and a half. After taking
the picture he asked me if I wanted to keep it in my arm and so I took it. I am a lover of crocodiles, I always liked them, but
keeping one in my arms was certainly an experience. Market meetings in Mexico.”


Think about what I did: on the morning I mounted the 28mm on the XPRO2, with the intention to go to the market with the
camera, maybe I could find something interesting to photograph. I was there with my wife, and I did have my mobile phone with
me. Guess what? I just thought to make the photograph to the guy, while a lot of other people would have thought of being
portrayed when the crocodile had them in their arms. Now I have the photograph, but not me posing with the alligator. I think
this is a bizarre way to act in these times where anyone seems to be busy to show himself. In the last hours also using an app on
facebook showing how they will be when getting older. 


We live in an era of inflated ego. Where what matters is to show yourself in front of life. Now I don’t have the photograph of me
with the alligator in my arms, and someone maybe can also to doubt that I really had it. Maybe next time I will meet the guy, I
will ask to my wife to take a picture. But this is not the point of my speech.

 
I would like you to stop and think how a photographer is afferming himself today, and what is the most important thing.

For example, I’m sorry, but I always have doubts when doing a search by images of a certain photographer instead of seeing his
photographs, I see the photographer’s face more. Is he/she a photographer or…a model?
 
You will have understood that for the affirmation of oneself for a photographer it is through his/her photographs. I believe this,
also in these influencers epoque.
 
There is a fantastic book from Alec Soth, showing how a work can tell a lot about the photographer, without showing himself but
the life of the others, or simply photographing objects, landscapes, etc.:
 
https://alecsoth.com/photography/projects/sleeping-by-the-mississippi
 
 
You can buy the book here:
 
https://www.photobookstore.co.uk/photobook-sleeping-by-the-mississippi.html
 
Well, in that book it emerges how a poetic of the image can marry the documentary focus. Exactly like THE AMERICANS of
Robert Frank, showing images from his trips around America, and later Stephen Shore will do the same. About Alec Soth book
Anne Wilkes Tucker said:
“In the book’s forty-six ruthlessly edited pictures, Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death,
religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex.”

In the analysis of what is photographed, certainly comes the consideration on what drives us to photograph and propose certain
images:
 
 
In rapid succession, from the bus I was traveling in to get home, I photograph the murals in the Guerrero barrio. Of course,
forget the splendid formalism and compositional construction of Soth’s work. The point is always and in any case the intent,
which in this case is aimed above all at recording how everyday life is through snapshots that donèt even care about the quality
of the image, altered by the reflections and dirt of the window.

 
At this point it emerges a question? Do we photograph always for the others? To make a book or affirming a particular message,
or sometimes we simply photograph for ourselves? Sometimes I take picture only to (try to) understand things. While I
photograph I analyze myself. And after, at home, in front of my computer, drinking a coffee starts another type of analysis.


 
In the photographic statement (each photo carries a statement with it) an intentionality always emerges. 

And that’s why I leave you with this last shot taken in June. A snapshot that doesn’t tell me much and that I certainly don’t
emphasize in my proposal, and what I pretend from my photography. And yet it represents everything I feel far away from today
as a photographer.

 
I’m brooding and meditating a lot on what I do and where this path is leading me. At the halfway point, with ten years of
experience as a photography professional, I expect more from my photography and my writings. Photography and the
experiences that photography brings with it inevitably affect my whole life and the changes they produce to me as a person.
Realism is best suited to convey the frightening idiosyncrasies of our time. – Duane Hanson

This is a photograph I made from a taxi. 1/1000 sec. to be sure to have it blurry free. Aldous Huxley claimed, “the more you
know, the more you see” and I believe a lot in this statement. 

The fact is that we read photographs as we read the world around us, a world that is full of values and meanings. A world that
will be perceived based on our life experience, the music we listen, the literature we read, the movies we watch. And, of course,
the visual imagery feeded by the photography we see and study, with a particular relevance from the one we love and appreciate
most.

The perception of things in front of our eyes are previously filtered by our vision, and vision is altered, influenced and formed. 

Each of my street social landscape photos, while documentary at first glance, is conceptualized and composed, also when made
by instinct and realized in instants and this is the reason why I chose to propose here a photograph from the car, where there is
not time on thinking compositions in a curated manner, creating in fact a cross-media dialogue between snapshot and landscape
photograph.

The boudaries of the genres are emphasized by the approach: I questioned a lot myself about photographing sometimes from
inside a moving vehicle, because from a bus often the point of view is too distant ( I mean more a metaphysical distance than a
real distance) and the risk is about getting a google maps effect. Furthermore, if I photograph from behind a glass reflections or
dirt or scratches can make the photograph not good. 


These issues can be reduced (from a perceptive point of view) when I make evident that I photographed from a car, like in this
example:
Anyway I said to myself tha in photographing these moments, and overall places,  that often go unseen, by including this
opportunity on my documentary work increases the effectiveness and also the completeness of my documentation about the
American realities, producing at the same time a more evident visual reaserach within the interior landscape, that allows me,
through the investigation of the suburbs to explore also inside myself. By including photos made through a vehicle I’m revealing
even more about that dichotomy inherent in the photographic act, which also makes subjective the objective representation of
objects and events. 


As you know I am a documentary photographer, and what I do is a kind of straight photography, with no staged situations or
recreated moments, but I question myself about how much truth and how much fiction I obtain from an image, regardless of the
type of approach, because in any case the fictional will have always a part in photography.

The Greek philosopher Plato promoted the idea of ultimate truths by advocating his notion of ideal forms. However, Plato
believed that man could never tangibly possess ideal forms because such forms could only exist in his mind. And this is pretty
interesting to consider because the notion of “reality”  existing only  in the mind is object of the recent studies about our
consciousness.

Consciousness is an exquisitely subjective phenomenon which constitutes an inexhaustible reserve of sensations, emotions and
ideas and on the other hand represents that “instrumental” entity through which the conscious subject “constructs” his own
inner world by interpreting “external” reality. The photographer Cristina de Middel takes up a concept already investigated
through his work from Jeff Wall that through the showing a truer “reality” through fiction, we can achieve a perception more
effective of reality.

Based on these considerations, I feel even more strongly the need to incorporate my essence and my life, the way of living and
therefore to see the world around me, but without artistic cravings on my part, with the knowledge that in any case the act of
photographing is a continuous exploration of myself.
Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical
environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”  Another definition is “a whole toy box full of
playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities…just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into
a new awareness of the urban landscape.” [source: http://www.kevingreeland.com/blog/2016/7/12/what-is-psychogeography]

Psychogeography is a portmanteau between psychology and geography. The study is focused on our psychological experiences of
the city, by revealing forgotten, or marginalised places of the urban environment. Inspired by the French poet Charles
Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur, Debord was a founding member of the avant-garde movement Situationist International, an
international movement of artists, writers and poets who aimed to break down the barriers between culture and everyday life
[source: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/psychogeography ]“The production of psychogeographical maps, or even the
introduction of alterations such as more or less arbitrarily transposing maps of two different regions, can contribute to clarifying
certain wanderings that express not subordination to randomness but total insubordination to habitual influences (influences
generally categorized as tourism, that popular drug as repugnant as sports or buying on credit).” from Introduction to a Critique
of Urban Geography, Debord 55

Through this introduction we can already understand the importance of the concept in order to use it as an approach for
photography. I think is pretty interesting how the more we study photography, the more we realize how much interdisciplinarity
is an important part of visual observation. This gives even more importance to photography as a document of observation and
study of man, both from a social and anthropological point of view, and from a more purely psychological and ontological point
of view.

The idea of “get lost in the city” in fact regards a lot those photographers shooting in the streets of the world. Despite some of
them prefer to make planned walks and even making scouting before to photograph a place, I like to explore where my feet go.

In psychogeography, a dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic
contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travellers, with the ultimate goal of
encountering an entirely new and authentic experience. source: http://www.kevingreeland.com/blog/2016/7/12/what-is-
psychogeography
 
And I would say this dérive is essential if our goal is making different photos and getting a no repetitive point of view of the same
city.
A fact is: to make this in Mexico City can be also dangerous. In the same downtown you need to know where to go with your
camera and what photographing (and the reason why I offer experiences to foreigner photographers).
 
 
When I went to Cuautepec to take pictures, I was aware of where I was. I don’t know the place that much, so it was a kind of
exploration. I have already written about the experience there:
 
https://www.alexcoghe.com/photographing-the-barrio-of-cuautepec/
 
But the same is happened in a quieter suburb like Lindavista, when I found myself to explore a part where I was never been:

 
 
The purposeful walking has an agenda: in that way we can’t absorb certain aspects of the urban world. This is why the drift is so
important to psychogeography. The acting of get lost better connects us to the city.

And this is easily understandable as it is vital for a photographer interested in documenting the reality of urban life.
 

Alex Coghe is a photojournalist

currently based in Mexico. In
2013 he worked on assignment
for Leica Camera AG, realizing
the documentary project “People
of Chapultepec” published
worldwide in the Leica X
brochure. His work in Mexico is
focused on the documentation of
human conditions in the barrios,
popular neighborhoods of
Mexico City and he collaborates
with some NGO in Oaxaca.
Currently Alessio’s work is
represented by Polaris Images
and LatinPhoto.
© All rights reserved - ALEX COGHE 2019 http://www.alexcoghe.com/ © 2019 Publisher
contact: alex@alexcoghe.com The copyright of the images are of Alex Coghe. If interested to
some photos, please contact the author.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and
Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is
prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

Official website: www.alexcoghe.com