Back after years in the Cyclades islands, then in the Small Cyclades.
Paros, Antiparos. The K Island.
Coming back after years in the same islands of the early youth.
To measure myself in front of those arms of ancient rocks.
For the third time, 18 years after the first trip, 8 after the last one.
Paros, Antiparos, Milos. Then a small island that I just call K.
Not to let find her too easily.
Here I am again, among those whitewashed streets, among these cats that are the most blessed in the world and, among the Meltemi flurries.
Surrounded by white and turquoise explosions of that unique light.
Fortunately still intact.
I invite you to discover it through these images. (Paolo Ruggiero)
Q&A with Paolo Ruggiero
Photography is…
Photography is a pleasure and also a discipline that can push the vision to become deeper and at the sime time lighter.
Photography demands to walk and penetrate in the spaces. To touch their surfaces, searching for a fine tuning with their peculiar beat, always different and often hidden.
I’m intrigued by all the specificities of the photographic medium, and also by the fact that landscape photography can help to interpret and rediscover the spaces in reconfiguring their visual complexity.
This because we only rarely manage to concentrate, to read the spaces and the objects with the attention that their photografic representation – on which we can later reflect at our leisure – allows us.
Photography and writing…
I believe that having a photographic sight helps to find accuracy and synthesis also in writing. Writing for its part helps photography to go beyond appearance, to ask questions and to pierce the surface.
I use to write and I like good literature, in general. Some books in some moments of life are able to move the way we see and live objects and spaces.
Before this work on Cyclades Island, for example, I read again “L’été” by Albert Camus, which intense images and daylight ispired me.
Who left the biggest impression on you?
Many artists in all disciplines until today. When I’ve started to take photos in 1995 I would say Stephen Shore and Lewis Baltz, for their peculiar interpretations of the urban landscapes, Luigi Ghirri for the poetic, silent dialogue he was able to establish with spaces, Franco Vaccari for his experimentalism.
But I am happy every time I read a page, I meet someone, I see a movie or listen to a music that causes an unexpected shift in the way I see things.
Tell us a little about yourself
I took a degree in Political Sciences at University of Bologna (Italy), with a thesis on Communication and I’m a free-lance journalist since 2004.
My passion for photography started on 1995, when I bought my first reflex camera.
