Portrait nominee

TALIAN RENAISSANCE



"I am convinced that everything comes to light through successive overlaps, as in dreams, where, extremely naturally, the past and the present, the high and the low, the day and the night mix, where anything has meaning, without having a precise verse and gravity. I am interested in what comes to the surface from the deep, what the light tears in the dark. Mine is a declaration of love for photography, mine is a personal search for beauty. In this series of photos lies the attempt not to lose it, not to forget it, it is as if the distance of the glances, the immobility of the figures, their evanescence, became a window through which to look myself, beyond a glass wet with rain, breath held, in the futile attempt not to let one glance, and the distant crowd of days gone by, vanish. As distance is a fundamental parameter in photography, it is certainly also so in relationships between people, I think that sometimes having the opportunity to hide in some way, can become a way to be seen better on the inside. The faces and above all the gazes of these female figures may recall, in

Giuseppe Gradella has a profound belief in memories and dreams.
Conscious that everything is layered over time, in the heart, in memory and that, sooner or later, it finds a way back to the light, to unveil itself, he thinks of photography as holding your breath, just under the surface, for as long as your breath lasts, then re-emerging to observe the world from a different perspective, one that is more aware. In order for memory to speak to him, he arms himself with a lot of patience and an excellent bait that allows him to fish even where life's flow is perceptible only to the eye, like under a sheet of ice. Physical places and those that exist in memory, where life and dreams intertwine in a process of transfiguration and internal re-creation in which time is suspended.
In Gradella's photographs, which deal with fashion, architecture and fine art, there is a constant juxtaposition between what is actually in front of the camera and what he has retained from his experiences, in a continuous study that becomes introspective self-critique.
As he himself is fond of saying, "For me, photography arrived like a storm after months of drought, and I