Finally I’m back to base, after being around the world for just over a month taking pictures, which furthermore it is my craft.

I would need a thousand posts to tell, by words and photographs, everything that we saw and experienced: in all truth I feel a little like this shop I filmed in oporto, in portugal, (beautiful city), a shop which seemed very undecided on what to sell. It goes from buddha, to pairs of scissors, from holy mary’s statues to lighters, from saints & christs on a cross, from beard trimming accessories to fishing equipment, from knifes to rifle’s viewfinders & handcuffs, to end up in style with articles for dogs.

Anyways, going around the world and keeping your eyes open, one can see extraordinary things, two very quick things, still from the latest trip to portugal:

A barber shop, which looks like it came out of metropolis by fritz lang:

A single shop that produces and sells one thing: personalized pins

As I wrote a few posts ago, what kept me company, amongst others, also the excellent book “hanno tutti ragione” by paolo sorrentino (great director, I strongly advise you to watch “le conseguenze dell’amore“)

I want to quote some of the lines from the book:

“I witnessed the swelling of the faces and the breasts of the women in the hope, sordid and desperate, to preserve the youth a little longer. a beauty sale. Pleased, pleased and pleased, lyophilized by rhinoplasty, kept up with glue like the chinese toys at the market, with the crust on the cheeks and suture stitches in those grooves which you once explored like an unprepared cowboy and now instead you fear to find the rotten corpse of youth. To caress a breast and visualize the beard of the surgeon: a monstrous misfortune.”

For now, this is all.

PS: Tuesday the first of June I will be a guest at the gecko festival, to talk about photography in apricale, in my ligury, I’ll be waiting for you!

currently out on newspapers is my advertising campaign for oroblù, with martina colombari and alessandro billy costacurta as testimonial:

martina and billy are wonderful: she is an amazing model, so available as she is professional, he is an elegant person, kind and extremely polite, in short exactly the contrary of a soccer player stereotype (you just have to know that his passions are history and modern art…).

To work with them, together or separately, is always an extreme pleasure: everyone does not lack commitment and professionalism which sometimes veers towards pleasure and fun messing around, all the ingredients that channel towards the job’s successful outcome.

Thank you martina! thank you billy!

Everything around the red sea, incredibly transparent…

shoot, shoot, shoot swimsuits…

And then, at the end of the day, five minutes to take one different photo, in otherwise the same thing, the same that I take since I was twenty years old: a woman and the sea…

yes, i sea you…

%#}gyeed@ob^#}*<~$£^{]!?”/6sr

Did you get it?

Neither did I

After hot/cold/hot/cold/rain another airplane (memphis airplane!), another airport (orio al serio, which I’d rather call a 1 stop shop), another trip, another shoot: this time towards the red sea.

Fat drunks swigging beers on the pool side.

Torrid heat.

To cool my soul I have the excellent “hanno tutti ragione” by paolo sorrentino.

I wrote this post very quickly, all done, text and photo, as usual with the iphone.

Reef and egyptian beach:

After shooting an editorial in warm weather we immediately flew into the cold and into the rain, still far away from italy.

What a wonderful thing is this weird job of mine: to go around the world and be lucky enough to see and to know the most mundane and unexpected things ever.

As araki told me once in venice, if there isn’t quality there has to be at least quantity: photography, beyond those feelings of intellectual/philosophical depressions it has an undeniable ownership and quality, the one of documenting.

And traveling with the best camera in the world, which is the one that is always in my pocket (the iphone!), I always look around me curious, stealing little shots here and there of the beautiful and strange reality that surrounds me.

As shakespeare said in hamlet: “whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, the extravagant and erring spirit hies to his confine…”. I travel far and wide, and, I do not philosophy, I photograph.

Below here is a delightful couple from my latest transfer, which I stopped outside a museum (like the famous sartorialist…) and a unique super tidy doctor’s office: the world is a wonderful place because its so super diverse!

a few weeks ago the “benedusi/thorimbert” studio put up eight photographs on sale at 250,00 euros each, devolving the eventual income to the rava foundation for haiti.

To avoid that the money collected would be taken by us and used for our own useless, spoilt and expensive intentions (motorbikes, music albums, books, shoes, jeans, movies, travels…), we thought of giving to the buyers the invoice number of the foundation, delivering the print soon after receiving the notice of payment to the relative bank. Our hands never touched a euro!

Therefore thanks to:

Adolfo (for two!)

Carla

Francesco

Giuliano

Riccardo

Antonio

Here below is the certificate of the rava foundation. Olé!

(I am speaking only for myself: all smoke in the eyes, anyways. I’m still the same cynic dickhead, selfish and opportunist as before…)

To arrive and leave again and decide and choose and retouch and be there and not be there and to pay and to be payed and the blog and the other blog and the other blog again and the revenue service and the book and the newspaper and the news and the internationals and to think and the movies and the clothes and the contracts and the taxes and the bank and the taxis and the check-ins and the locations and the layouts and the friendships and I and the others and everything and the music and the noise and the silence……………..

Just few flowers, to have a few seconds of relax…

(post written and picture taken with iphone)