Photomanipulation nominee

After years spent taking photos and painting, I realized that I need both and they don’t need to be separate works. When together they can push each other to reach new possibilities.
I combined acrylic and oil paint on these pictures I took in an abandoned factory in Northern Italy at sunrise. Photography keeps me connected to the physical world, while painting allows me to investigate perception and imagination by giving a form and a colour to things invisible to the eye. Photography helps me make sense to what I see, and painting helps me make sense to what I feel. For me both forms of art are essential and deeply connected one to the other.
I try to go beyond the representation of the physical world by embracing it and only by combining photography and painting, I can express my personal reality how I see it: a mess of perceived shapes, shifting colours, textures, noise, silence, memories, hopes and dreams that change, evolve and transform like every living being and together with every living being.

I spent most of my life shooting and painting. When I finally realized that I need both, and they don’t need to be separate works, it set me free.
I’m not interest in creating fantasy, abstract worlds, and I’m not interested in appearances and descriptions either, but what I need to make sense to, is the world around me and all its people. Both the environment and every living being in it are constantly changing and their most significant traits are invisible to the eye. So, I asked myself how could I use photography to talk about something invisible?
Paint is a wonderful medium that opens you to infinite possibilities, but this versatility was a limit to me as I need that deep connection to the world around me that photography brings.
Photography is deeply linked to what we see, to the physical reality. Many scholars have discussed this topic at length, much better than I could ever do. It may be ‘the death of reality’, a ‘hyperreality’ or a ‘minute part of reality’, in any case its profound connection to the world that physically exists it’s undeniable.
But when emotions are involved, and we look at reality as something