Black and white is my language because it concentrates the gaze. Without colour to distract, what emerges is contrast, shadow, grain, the geometry of a face. The image also frees itself from time: with no chromatic reference to an era, it becomes universal, and speaks the same language to whoever looks at it today and to whoever will look at it tomorrow.
I work only with the light that nature offers me. I do not force it, I follow it. I look for the places where it falls the right way, a portico that becomes a theatre of shadows, an open field where the sky becomes the largest diffuser in the world. It is an honest light, one that reveals without cruelty.
Every session is first of all a human encounter. I do not direct people towards studied poses: I build a space of trust in which a person can simply exist, until they stop posing and begin to be. That is where the portrait is born, in that instant of truth I feel arriving before I even see it. Everything rests on respect: whoever lets themselves be photographed entrusts me with something, and my craft is never to betray it.
Before I shoot, I already have the image in mind. I pre-visualise it, contrasts and nuances, so that the camera and the post-production do nothing but refine what is already complete. I shoot with prime lenses, wide open, because a single plane in focus is my way of saying where to look.
The journey ends on paper. The fine-art print turns the image into an object to touch and to keep, and gives the photograph the weight and depth a screen cannot give back. A photograph, for me, becomes real only when you can hold it in your hand.
