Amicale

Sakura, the blossoming of cherry trees, lights up the life of Tokyo. In a city that seems to be so tight with space, how can the flowers find all that room? And how does Sakura take place, now, in Tokyo? Flowers and emotions all over the place, and not only blooming trees in the parks. The blossoms are everywhere: in signs, in shop windows, in gadgets, on restaurant menus, on the big neon advertising boards, on leaflets. You find them in stations and on underground carriages, in offices, restaurants, on newspaper pages. Sakura creeps in and permeates the banal life of the city, which, once Sakura has totally conquered it, starts to take no more notice of it. Street photography images alternate with images of Sakura and render this passage from the life in parks to that in urban interiors. Sakura is absorbed by every instant of everyday life and ignored immediately afterwards.

Technique:  This is a photo exhibition of about 15 black and white framed photos in format A3.

Bio:  I am an art photographer. By profession, I am a psychoanalyst. I tend to take black and white pictures but I turn to colour whenever I happen to see colour as one of the meaningful “characters” present in an image. Photography and psychoanalysis are actually closer than one would think at first sight. In fact, sometimes the same techniques are used, such as being open to feelings; being interested in detail; ability to develop visions that re-organise reality in an original new way; getting involved in a situation. In order to take a photograph, I must be alone and get into a dreamy state which allows me to see things that were not there before. My works have been presented  publicly on many occasions.  Among them, I would mention the Triennale Museum of Design in Milan, BAFTA ( British Academy of Film & Television Arts)  in London and the European Festival of Photography in Reggio Emilia. I have illustrated two books (published in Moscow in 2012 and 2014), one on Lombardy  and the other on Venice and art history. This photographic project has consisted in going beyond mere description and posing questions on how we look at monuments and how we relate to them. I have published more than fifteen book covers for several international publishers such as Routledge (Oxford), Wiley (New York), Karnac (London), Klass (Moscow), Borla (Rome). In the course of my career I have published photographs for the newspapers “Corriere della Sera” and “L’Unità”, for the magazine “L’Europeo” (“Godless America”) and the website of Feltrinelli publisher (“Your Pictures and Words on India”).