Vision: how a portrait is born and how it is read

I look for natural settings, the woods and the sea, and when I choose street photography, architecture too, because a portico, a wall, an alley can build theatres of shadow that no set design can match. The light I prefer is natural, from a window or an overcast sky. If a project requires it, I build one with the right tools, and I look for it soft and sincere, like the other.

Before I shoot I already see the finished image, with its contrasts and its shades. The rest is a breath of refinement.

Three gazes in one image

Inside a portrait live three gazes: that of the person photographed, mine, and that of whoever looks afterwards. Giovanni Gastel, the master I love most, used to tell his subjects: “I am not a mirror, I am a filter.” The portrait I make of you is you, passed through what I have read, seen and lived, and then through the eyes of whoever meets it.

What happens in the one who looks

Before an open image everyone lays down their own world, which is why the same photograph moves one person and leaves another distant. The image offers its surface to everyone, and gives its depth to those who stop to listen. I prepare the portrait, the rest happens in the person looking, where it becomes theirs.

In a face I look for the instant when the mask falls, the one we all wear to protect ourselves, and for a moment the truth of a person comes to the surface.

The price of a portrait

A true portrait costs something to the one who makes it. It asks for patience, for waiting on the right light, for the willingness to stand in front of a person and stay sensitive even when it would be easier to close up. Steve McCurry has shown it throughout his career, and it is one of the reasons I feel close to him.

An image that stopped you can keep living on paper.