I know that judging art is a bad thing, because only the creator can judge his work well. That’s why I don’t send my works to photo contests, fully aware of how many outstanding painters were appreciated only after death.
But still, it’s nice when even the more difficult works appeal to someone, especially when it’s a Vogue Italia photo editor.
Here another recognition of my work, for which I sincerely thank you.
My entire visual story of fallen innocence highlighted by Iconic Artist Magazine Italia. Thank you beautifully, and I present to you this entire story, which consists of three, very significant, images
It’s immensely gratifying to see your work in the Italian media dedicated to photography, especially those that present the highest level of artistic vision. Iconic has already honored me with another highlight of my work, this time it was a magical female nude session with the beautiful and girlish Karina.
As usual, my pictures are created as much during shooting as during processing. My colors, colors that are the result of thinking about the image, experience, story. I never in my life do something like some photographers do, that they take a color wheel and adjust according to a scheme to get a catchy effect on the viewer. What are the opposing colors, what color is in the triad, which one matches the other so as to get the so-called “wow effect.” It makes me laugh, using the color wheel for a painting job is moronic, just like using the grammatical dictionary of a language to write poetry. The color wheel and relationship between colors should be known, but boasting about its use to achieve “wow” is, in my opinion, an open admission of the blindness of the soul and the mechanical perception of the image, that is, acting like an artificial intelligence – which has rules programmed into it and processes the world according to that. This is tons of light years away from the quest, fulfilled through history by poets, painters of all kinds, who go away always too soon, carrying their souls on their shoulders, which no artificial intelligence will ever counterfeit. Well, unless one wants to do the same thing as robots, as Tomasz Pluszczyk recently described in analyzing the progress of artificial intelligence in rendering images. Well, if someone wants to use cheap tricks to create at most correct images, why not, I am not one of such people π
I invite you, stay with me and my model, Karina, in this beautiful moment of contemplation of the girlish body and human destiny π
And referring to our conversations during the session, when Karina talked about Odessa and its musical traditions, that’s how nostalgic I associate this song with these images – and although not from Odessa, the melody and melancholy fit me for these photos:
My keynote, which guided me from the idea to the realization of this short series of photographs, was a passage from the work of William Butler Yeats:
The innocent and the beautiful
HAve no enemy, but time
And an excerpt from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser:
The breasts like lilies til other leaves be shared
Her nipples like young blossomed jessamine
such fragrant flowers to give most odour’s smell
but her sweet odour did them all excel
Innocence and its loss, and consequently considerations of truth, have had a very long list of representations in iconology and painting – I will not describe here everything I was familiar with before creating these photographs with the Model.
I will only add that I wanted with this series to ask what is innocence? How does it connect with youth and carnality? Does it also connect with the spiritual element of man? Does this spiritual element even exist? How does it pass away? What is the loss of innocence? Can innocence be longed for? Finally – Lily’s Innocence – I wanted to play with words a bit. Whose innocence? The bud of the lily flower, or the girl named Lilia? Lilianna?
As it is usually me and my paintings – jittery in the light, a bit dark, mysterious and questioning, looking for a wayβ¦.
Thank you to the model, Natalia for realizing my idea π
One photo from this series was once again selected by the photo editors of Vogue Italia π
Summer starts beautifully, another portrait full of girlishness and tenderness (every nude is a portrait, although not every portrait is a nude π of the beautiful Natalia π Grazie editori, molte grazie ragazzi (okay, I don’t speak Italian, but a beautiful language, will have to learn π
And an even earlier portrait that Vogue editors also loved, this time of the lovely Anna π
Summer greetings I send. Weather like in sunny Italy π As for me it can be π
