Its a pleasure to interview great photographer from Italy, Augusto De Luca one of the finest and talented photographer who have photographed many celebrities and showcased in many international art museums till now…lets see what he have to say with snaptured.com
Hello and welcome to Snaptured.com, first of all thanks a lot for taking time and allowing us to interview, can you please introduce yourself, where are you from etc etc…
I was born in Naples and I am an Italian photographer and performer. I have made many portraits of celebrities such as Rick Wakeman, Carla Fracci, Hermann Nitsch, Giorgio Napolitano (11th President of Italy), and many others. I graduated in Law and became a professional photographer in the mid 70’ies.
I showed my work in many Italian and foreign galleries, institutions like the Chamber of Deputies in Rome and many Italian Culture Institutes and Universities abroad.
My photographs are kept in both public and private collections such as the International Polaroid Collection (USA), the Paris National Library, the Municipal Photographic Archive in Rome, the National Gallery of Aesthetic Arts (Beijing), the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi (Belgium).
I have also worked for advertising campaigns and made record covers and photo books.
Can you tell us how you got started in photography?
In the mid 70ies when I was attending university young people had two great passions: music- in fact everybody would play a musical instrument and have a band- and photography. I had a friend who invited me to develop some negatives and print on paper the photos in his dark room. When the picture miraculously emerged from the chemical bath, I was struck and stunned. I fell in love with it and decided to be a photographer. I wanted to “create” too. After a few days I had the complete equipment to shoot, develop and print and was ready to venture on that new path.
What genre of photography you mostly do? What other genre you like….
I have focussed on portraits mainly but I have also worked on traditional and experimental photography made with many different materials. My style is characterized by a keen attention to frames and to the minimum expressive units of the subject in the frame. In my work you can find neat realistic pictures together with other images in wich the interplay of forms and signs is reminiscent of the metaphysical approach.
What took you to be at this level?
I am a self-taught photographer… I have always had a creative experience, a compulsive drive to express myself. I started with music and I actually was at that time a fierce rocker. Only later have I fulfilled my creative need through photography, by “manipulating”, thus remaking reality, seen from unsettling perspectives that matched a big close-up object with a far-removed background. I would have probably liked drawing but I am absolutely unable to draw.
Each of my photographs is filtered by emotion, by the relationship I establish with the place that I portray. Whenever I see something that appeals to me, I start turning around it to find my own standpoint. I work on myself and on the place at the same time. My photographs convey my ideas, my passions, my monsters, who I am and what I think. My art is surely the photograph of my soul.
Typical question, which image is your very best till now? We know all of your images are best but we want to know that one best image
My best photo is always the last one I made.
What gears you usually use for photography?
Hasselblad e Leica.
What do you do when you are not photographing?
I think about my next work 🙂
Which programs you use for editing purpose?
I do not use any special program, I just make some parts of the picture darker or lighter…that is I do what I used to do with my hands under the enlarger.
What is the best advice you can give for the young upcoming landscape photographers?
The new generations experience a peculiar situation in relation to photography. Thanks to their smartphones, they all believe they are photographers, but actually one must study photography, you cannot obtain with a smartphone what you get with a professional camera. Young people must see lots of things, look, look look, start copying and then create. As Picasso used to say, “one must be able to copy”, a copy is not a negative thing and it is an automatic mechanism. All the styles that you study make up your personal background and give rise to your personal way of taking photos.
Once again thanks a lot for sharing your experience and time with Snaptured.com
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