To avoid offending certain sensitivities, we warn that the site contains explicit content
To avoid offending certain sensitivities, we warn that the site contains explicit content
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
email: paolo@fotopaoloaldi.it
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
© 2021 by Paolo Aldi
Portraits in the Square - Poetics
These are images obtained by having the subjects pose for several tens of seconds. I do not want to steal snapshots, but rather consciously involve the people portrayed through a non-aggressive, but affectionate and friendly attitude.
The process has its own rituality.
I spend a day in a square and invite the people who frequent it, or who approach me out of curiosity, to pose for a single or group portrait. I explain what a pinhole camera is and what a pose of about a minute entails. Then we choose the framing and background together. I photograph for free and in exchange the subject authorizes me to use the images produced. I work in 4x5" Polaroid and have the possibility to immediately deliver a print while keeping the negative. Of the subjects I keep the name, surname, address ... and a human relationship that sometimes continues over time.
At the same time and around me, a small "Pinhole Circus" is set up: a photographic exhibition made up of about ten 60x80 panels on easels, a totem illustrating the initiative and spreading the basic notions of pinhole photography, images and boxes with holes, a “camera obscura” 50x50x100 cm through which to look at the surrounding world, friends and collaborators who help me or entertain people. The working methods are obviously slow and this allows relationships to be built.
The resulting photographs are not stolen shots, but testimonies of relationships attempted, built, realized. The subjects are not robbed of their image, but rather offer it with great seriousness and participation.
Both I (the photographer) and the subject, through the long pose and the effort and attention it requires, regain an awareness of time that is too often lost.
I photograph using HAL, a 4x5" camera with interchangeable focal length that I designed and build in collaboration with my friend Giuseppe Alzetta. I wanted a tool all my own, from start to finish, so as not to be constrained by an overwhelming technological unconscious to which I would have to adapt. On the contrary, to use a camera in my own image and likeness, whose display and use is not a cold barrier between me and the subject.