/ 2014 / Press / People/Personality

Rinascimento

  • Photographer
    Matilde Piazzi, Italy


It was when I was studying Medieval and Renaissance Art that this work came to my mind.
I started focusing on the face and how it has changed trough the eras and how the expression of feelings and the state of mind became the cornerstone of a whole new world: the birth of the portrait occurred together with a new interest for the persona.
And then came the attention to detail, human detail. Lots of painters began to make anatomical studies: verisimilitude became vehicle of discovery. And it is through the discovery that a rebirth could take place: a Rinascimento.
Even my work has been a research, not through books, paintings or films belonging to our life, but through familiar and unknown faces.
In a little homemade studio I first took pictures of my models, trying to avoid false expressions despite the pose, and after, making huge prints of them, I felt free to look at those faces freely, stealing all the time that I needed, portraying them as if they were magnificent landscapes. In that place and from that moment, models in flesh and blood became paper and, finally, through the camera, they took the form of the painting.
And the background is situated into another place, separated from the portrait, because, differently from the Renaissance, we are not allowed to live in a place that reflects our nature; but something natural seems to survive in our eyes.

Awards On April 4,2012 I won the GECO AWR-The Geometry of the Color-
International competition of architectural photography

2013 The photobook “Rinascimento” has been shortlisted at UNSEEN DUMMY AWARD