Q: Hi Mattia, welcome to Pellicola. Tell us something about your life and yourself.
Ciao! I am a photographer, based in Milan. I love landscape in any shape, I like urban architecture that I love riding on my bike, but I also love its wildest part, the mountain which I like to explore and climb with my friends.
Q: Tell us how you discover photography. Do you remember when and why did you start taking pictures?
I remember me as a child with my father, on a summer evening in the early 90s, in Tossa de Mar, Spain. We were on a small beach and he was shooting a night landscape with a long exposure, he had the flexible shutter in his hand and taught me to count seconds to myself putting thousands before “milleuno, milledue, milletre…” In that very moment I realized that photography was technique and magic. From that moment to take over the same camera was but a short step.
Q: If you should define your photography, what style or adjective will suit it the best?
I believe my photography is instinctive and essential. I always try to remove to bring to evidence, so to draw the attention just to where nobody, or almost nobody would care to look at.
Q: Tell us about your project Building The Sea, how did it come up?
I have been always struck by the difference between beaches in Summer and beaches in Winter. They almost seem to be different places, full of life in Summer, full of melancholy during the Winter. I wanted to capture the moment of transformation, that moment in which the metamorphosis takes place.
Q: Why exactly “building the sea” if the sea it is something you don’t build?
When you’re a child, the Sea means holiday, playing on the beach with marbles, digging holes under the umbrella with shovel and bucket, building sand castles, fetching the flippers and the mask from the bathing hut. These objects are representative, themselves build the Sea.
Q: Is there something you want to show or let people feel with this project?
I would like that my shots were not just images, but Photos making people experience their own personal and intimate emotions.
Q: There are no human figures in the project, is there a reason?
Every year the sea is built and dismantled, but it happens like magic, nobody knows who the builder is.
Q: What keeps you inspired?
The mind is an incredible place where it takes little to give birth to the spark of an idea, we must protect it, believe it and feed it every day and in every way: from travels to love, from food to art, everything we live can turn into inspiration. Even in photography the inspirations are endless, I love the great photographers of the Italian landscape (Ghirri, Chiaramonte, Fontana etc.), the rigor of the School of Düsseldorf, the intensity of William Eggleston, the sensuality of Newton.
Q: Do you have any upcoming projects?
Besides various commercial works, I am working on a project that I think to title “intuizioni”, the work delves into the meaning of sensitivity, meant as an experience of knowing through the senses, space and time.
Q: Suggest us a film or an album.
Music is essential for me, every situation has its own soundtrack and every memory has its sound. It would be simplistic to name one only album, I like from J Dilla’s hip hop to Four Tet’s electronics, from Moodyman’s house to Thundercat’s Jazz. Working with musicians to create album covers is one of the reasons that makes my work turn into a smile on my face.
All images © Mattia Borgioli
