28 September 2008
La settimana italiana / Italian week: Domenica
I lived most of my life in a nice town of the Riviera, moving to Genova a dozen years ago.
My photographic path didn’t have a regular course. Photography has been my job for a while but also had some long breaks. A hobby became a passion at high school and after some years of travel and photo experiences I decided to leave my job - of cad and software services - to follow a one year course of naturalistic photography and geographical reportage at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milano to become a full time photographer.
My works included photo report abroad and in Italy, but also news pictures, working mainly for photo agencies. My documentary style had a simple and direct approach to society and problems. Since the beginning I worked only in colour.
For several reasons, not only economical, I reduced my photographic activity to fall back on my former job and for some years I stopped with photography as a mean of expression finding in clay sculpture a new interest. I had different professional experiences in the services area with more and more highly relational jobs and again my life got back into action with photography. Meanwhile my perception of the world around me had changed, I wanted to communicate people’s life in a more empathic way, fruit of a greater knowledge and a sensitiveness to weaker things.
I simplified my equipment with two rangefinder cameras, 35mm and 6x7, and began using black and white only. My recent work is concerned a lot with social state and politics, so in some pictures there’s an explicit message. Sometimes ironic pictures comes out too. Today I’m working on a project about the historical centre of Genova, a wonderful and mysterious place, depicted on the car windows subjects of my photos.
Paolo Saccheri
invited by Joanna Kinowska