Publications  ↓

Hello Roger. Who are you and what do you do for a living?

I was born in Switzerland and in early age I began experimenting with photography.

I graduated with the highest grade from Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, Italy. My curiosity for the human shape Ieads me to an artistic approach. As up to today, I carry on as an artistic as well as a fashion photographer. I always have thought that photography is a precise lifestyle. A commitment that bears the mark of abnegation, the first condition to approach the sublime. “Photography for a higher awareness of myself, of my human being”.

When and how did you decide to venture into photography?

l’ve been bound to photography since my first year of the Academy of Fine Arts, when I became aware that I could use it as a mask from which to gain strength and hide my idea of limits.

Can you talk a bit about some of your work over the years?

I explore our social fragmentation, where each one of us thinks to look out for himself, with no regard for our context. I look for shards of the drama of the human condition to document through photographic fragmentation, that they relate to setbacks and aspirations, weaknesses and strengths, pain and joy. Of rights archieved and rights trodden down.

Tell me about the ‘I am Flesh’ project. How did the idea for the series come about?

Seeing is a pure, primordial, non-Judgmental act; thinking, interpreting and evaluating are subsequent processes arising out of the habit and need of ordering all imagery in our own representation of the world. ‘I am Flesh’ is based precisely on this lack of immediate assessment: by expanding its scope. it creates an experience comparable to that of Iiterary haiku, where – in the absence of lexlcal virtuosity – one has the possibility of following a path through reality.

Who are those people in photographs?

In ‘I am Flesh’ it is bodies who make up reality: 35 naked female bodies metioulously filmed and photcgraphed in their primeval condition to lock as real as possible- and surprisingly so. No distraction is allowed on front of these bodies: in their presence, any feeling of attractionc repugnance, bewilderment, excitement or banal initial curiosity fades away as one gets physically closer to the work, to its outspoken essentiality. These naked bodies act as a stimulus to search new insights in Ioneliness and are like invitations to a confrontation with one’s own self. They reject all pretexts and lies: there is nothing to prove, the evidence is crystal-clear. They are timeless, yet create a space which wrong-foots us. They express the ultimate courage to lay bare and offer onesell without mediaticns – which we almost always lack. We are somehow forced to incarnate in their flesh. And without us being aware of the process, they become maps – and we do the same in a transitive spirit of daring. ‘I am Flesh’ is, above all, a project on identity.

Why did you name the project as ‘I am FIesh’?

‘I am Flesh’ the flesh that exposes itself. calls for others’ perception and the inner self, usually held back as opaque and inaccessible, and becomes open and displayed on the skin so revealing the inner self. These works, rub up against us, create the friction that is typical of the human encounter and call everybody to live a relationship in which reciprocal differences are a pre-condition for understanding.

How was the process of preparing and shoothg for the project?

Friends and models have joined the project as well as all those who simply adhered by seeing the project itself growing. I asked all of them to gift me a moment in which they would have totally released themselves from their life pattern. Only at that moment I would have pictured them in their female being. This extrsordinary resemblance to the truth is achieved by means of a special technique: each image is composed of 47.244 X 32.864 pixels per inch, equivalent to 400 X 278 cm printable area at 300 dpi, while – in order to obtain better perception – the works will be executed as 230 x 160 cm on Diasec and displayed all together.

Tel me how the idea tor ‘Be Two’ project came about

The ‘Be Two’ is a project on ID through couples Iacking will and pulsions proper of nature’s human soul. By eliminating drives and muscular contraotions, in that very photographic juncture instant I obtained a negative of the instinclual couple and of those reasons why a couple has a right to exist. This negative allowed me to trace a map, an ideal outline in which I can pick elements bonded to the unoonscious and not typical of every human being, elements that crop up afterwards in the images.

What types of people inspire you to take their photogaph?

The encounter with people of passim belongs to that moment in which our sensory receptors are amplified. Photographically speaking I act during this time, when you get closer to each other in dilated pupils. “The pleasure in seeing is spring which feeds summer of a deeper understanding: the possibility TO BE together with the others”.

What do you ask your subjects in front of your camera?

I disguise myselt completely in the pictures machine from where I take the strength from, and I hide my idea of limit in a realty pictured together, in a lonely instant and without mediation. My subject/Models know that Is the meeting in itself that Interests me, exactly when, in a few instants, you have to decide how and how much of yourself you will, and are able to give.

You’ve worked both photography and video, how do you adapt creatively between the two?

I use the video as if it was a camera, expanding in time steady images and I use photography going after a moment that nearly always escapes, like a hunter and his prey. Photography has got to do with hunting. You click, you shoot and you hope you’ve captured your prey. The predator-hunter sleeps to rest and dreams to recounter on his ability to hunt. Photographing is dreaming of hunting, shooting at preys in order to really seize them the day after. At the sunlight the photographer is like the hunter who used to paint in the caves (darkroom) the preys so that the cave could give birth to those preys in the open air where then he would have hunted for them in the daylight. Channel of birth, platonic cave, darkroom, rocky wall, film, digital support… I remain a hunter, photography a mean of hunt; ars goetia, a theurgy the photographing (Maurizio Medaglia).

What equipment do you use?

I use Nikon for photography. Canon for video and Hasselblad for the medium-format.

How do approach a new project when you get an idea?

What surrounds me becomes a field of experimentation which is fed by my desire to get personally involved. I am always questioning myself. Trying to find the courage not to lock back and understand what is the way that allows me to grow.

What is your art theory?

Society creates and destroys models in the interest of a few. Its everyone’s responsibility to find or create alternatives.

What’s next lor you? Any future plans?

Find out new territories to explore and tell about.