[quote text_size= »small »]

Giuseppe SANSONNE
Artist statement

[/quote]

 

My first photographic memory is my father’s lab, in Italy, on the Lago Maggiore. I saw slowly appear black and white, in a slightly reddish dark. Images that appeared like ghosts of past moments … Light and time have given something magic to the world : the ability to retain beauty of a place, a person, a thing.

When I was a young boy, I came to live in France and I discovered this country with the eyes of a child. I lived in Versailles and discovered Paris and his magnificent architecture under the typical Parisian grey sky. The places I lived influenced me as the people I met. Lakes, sea, mountains, or monumental cities are my predilection subjects. But the light is the key of my artistic feelings. And the time is my obsession.

So, I always wanted my work to explore the relationship among places, people, time and light.

I use photography as a means of self-expression – I make pictures for myself, to identify (to give me an identity?), then to retain places, to better understand my reality, and to express my interpretation of the world around me. My goal is to use my camera to stop the time, and let people see only what pass thru the years.

My inspiration comes from the contrast of the light and the dark. I take advantage from the changing of the day’s light (or the night’s light) to arouse the mood of my dreams. Slowly and without intention, the color has appeared in my work. So that the black and white imagery, that some of my photography masters inspired me, have been concealed. Michael Kenna, Jean-Michel Berts, and earlier Daguerre or Charles Nègre, had a very important influence on my pictures.

The long time exposures, the documentary approach of the early photographers (as Daguerre, Charles Nègre, Niepce), the light understanding of J.M. Berts and the compositions of Michel Kenna are the tools of my artistic approach.

So I decided to melt the techniques to find a better way to get the light rendering, in order to express the feelings that a place or a person give to me.

Mixing filters over my lenses, using colors or black and white old rendering, photographing places in the day then in the night to get the right emotion, I finally built a simple photographic approach: show the ugly as beautiful, to convey a feeling, a sensation, in front of a monumental place that passed thru the years.

The image has now become the primary way to express the « ghosts » that inhabit my soul …

Every picture has a story. Every photographer is a visual storyteller. It is through these stories that people are inspired. Inspiration sparks imagination. Imagination sparks creation.

 

Giuseppe SANSONNE