WHO I AM
I live in Milan, where I was born in 1966, Last of 4 children, preceded by Tiziana, Manlio and Francesca.
Ours is a family where tradition and rebellion have lovingly inertwined. My father, Roberto called Gianni by everyone, was a traditional man, bery honest and passionat, my mother, Alice, the classic domestic angel, with the never fulfilled dream of travelling around the world. And then Tiziana, who has been able to renvent herself in the course of her life, a businesswoman, a restaurateur and then a highly in demand baby sitter; Manlio, marketing man for 20 years and then yachtsman and sailor for total life choice; Francesca, a vulcano, who moved to Paris when she was 18, for love, exactly as granny Ines did 60 years earlier.
And finally me, the fourth, the baby boy, the mascot, the last to leave the parents' house, all play and imagination. Undecided about the future, I graduate in Literature and Philosophy and dance flamenco for 6 years.
Somewhat unexpectedly, one day, a big corporate offers me a steady and also interesting job in the "human resources" field. It's a business I have never left since and human resources, that is people, have become the focus of my job and also of my photography.
Photography, right.
Photographs have always called me. I leafed through and composed the family albums with dedication and pleasure. I emptied the drawer full of family photos and I browsed through them, losing the sense of time. I don't remember ever getting bored viewing pictures in my life, neither with the classic wedding albums that everybody avoids.
Beyond family pictures, I was bewitched by Marilyn Monroe's photos: I already collected them at the middle school, together with my friend Guido. Magic were the ones by Elliott Erwitt and Milton Greene. Though, for years I shot very little, 10-12 films a year, most in the summer, with low quality automatic camers.
I think that, together with a misterious interior click and the coming of the digital era, the encounter with the Wahlberg family made me change perspective. Saskia, my wife today, was my muse and her father, Thomas, professional director of photography, my first teacher. It was 2004 when I bought my first digital reflex camera, Used. In 2009 I became father of Fabio, who of course has become a recurrent subject of my shootings.
Year after year, taking pictures has become for me a compulsive activity, a way to view and review the world: the camera has changed my relation with the world itself..
ph. Laura Ghellere