Two years ago I ran the benedusi competition number one: which had its  winner.

I’m going to copy paste exactly what I wrote at that time

“very often happens that people write to me (young photographers, aspiring photographers, curious people, assistants…) and send me photographs, websites and so on asking me the same things: an opinion on the photographs, to allow them to come here in the studio, to have a chance to work with me, to clean the toilet for free, to carry my suitcases on my trips …..

I try to answer to everybody, sometimes i manage sometimes I don’t, it depends on the workload at that moment. I try to answer because i think it is right to help who is starting out, and it feels like yesterday when i was knocking on the doors of professional photographers: still now in my evening thoughts I thanks those who encouraged me and curse those who didn’t.

the real problem is that I really can’t answer and especially see everyone who writes to me. so I came up with this: the benedusi competition. send me an e-mail with your work here concorso AT benedusi.it and I will select a winner who will win:

-his photograph published here on my blog

-a full day on set with me, without even having to clean the toilet.

obviously there is no theme, you can send any type of photography. ok? come along….”

I copied and pasted what I wrote two years ago for a simple reason: who better than me can write what I think?!?!

So: today the benedusi competition number two begins. You have more or less a month to send in your work.

Good luck!

My reinterpretation of an idea by andrea basile

This summer my people at the studio made me a nice surprise when they came to TPW: they photographed themselves (a bit like chic junkies…) and theyhad made a t-shirt with their little faces on it.

From the left daria (factotum and the bearing column of studio benedusi) then giorgio (assistant and assisted) and last but not least alessia (intern and all else).

They are my children. I’m afraid without them I could do very little.

Thank you!

My website is often tweaked and updated.

New homepage, with a little welcoming video and a little phrase which I had in mind for a while, to understand from the beginning how big is the “home” in which one is about to enter:

The BIO page is also new, with two biographies, in positive and negative, in both senses:

Last but not least the MY BEST page, which it evolves often: at the moment there are a few covers:

By clicking on the preview you land directly on the relative pages

In all honesty I would have other things to write about and other things to talk about. But, inevitably, the messing around is part of me in a way that is necessary. So I want to show you something.

In this day and age of which we think of it as hyper technologic, where you cannot be without the internet, computer, where the newspapers an magazines are read on an ipad, were power is measured in byte and were (we presume!) anyone has at home and above all in the office a personal computer with a decent printer.. In this world of the year two thousand (fuck, we are in the year two thousand!!!) there is someone (in milan!) that sends tiny letters like the one below, which I found in my post box just a week ago:

My friend chico de luigi called in July proposing me to exhibit at the NO PANIC space, guest of the festival of photography which for many years now it takes place in savignano sul rubicone, all this together with fabio novembre and toni thorimbert.

The theme he proposed to us is to take a photograph everyday for the whole month of August, with the iphone. A very interesting project.

Before starting to take pictures I think, as I do, on what to shoot. I imagine that the images will be exposed all together, presumably one next to each other. So I think of creating something that can have a double meaning: to take pictures that can talk for themselves but also become one single big shot all together as well as using the precise timing imposed by the “regulations” to tell an hypothetic (or real…) succession of moods.

This is what I wanted to talk about, theoretically.

Then when we went from the theory to the practical I thought of paying an homage to two teachers: the weightlessness and surrealism of luigi ghirri and the equivalents by alfred stieglitz.

The road was paved: every day I pointed my iphone in the air looking for clouds (which where barely there…) and I photographer a piece of the sky.

For me this operation has become somewhat very intimate but at the same time extremely public, something very deep but at the same time very light: after looking through these photos I am definitely going to recall this August of 2010 much more and much better than if I photographed every single instant of my daily life.

So here are the images

Equivalente_august 2010

I am sorry that I can’t pay homage to the beautiful work done by my partners in crime with the same quality.

Fabio novembre took some polaroids of his two daughters. For him, who doesn’t take a shit without an “idea”, I find that he created a work that is very fresh and light, and because of this it is very intimate and has depth. Well done fabio! Here is his work:

Verde e Celeste

I found Toni’s work absolutely beautiful. A great photographer can still do amazing things even with an iphone. A wonderful story about his summer in puglia: a puzzle in which the thirty one shots create a very personal design.

This is his exposed work:

1_8_2010>31_8_2010

It is a pity to see them so small and badly. This is one of my favourite enlarged:

photo by toni thorimbert

This whole stage, as I mentioned before, has been invented, created, animated, photographed and whatever else by our friend chico.

Here I photographed him in front of his master piece:

chico de luigi

While he is photographing me…

photo by chico de luigi

In the end all the images where sold through a lottery. Unfortunately I wasn’t there anymore. I am glad though because my work went to patricia:

The evening continued, how shall we say it, not in a boring way: vealism romagnolo and photography. What do you want more?

As a small testimony of all this here is toni and I busy with an ice cream…

Thanks everyone!

I’m on my way to savignano sul rubicone for its renowned photographic festival.

I will be exposing in chico de luigi’s indian reserve.

With my old pals toni and fabio.

See you there!

venice.

night.

After the cinema festival.

taxi.

It was asked of me to explain how I arrived to the black and white result on the portraits that I’ve done for the corriere della sera. No problem, I have no secret trick to hide, also because of a simple reason: there is no secret!

In the mean time an answer to a question that wasn’t asked: why in balck and white and why that kind of black and white. Black and white because I had those two examples in mind which I spoke about in my previous post, which where avedon and sander. So therefore images, very “classic” portraits, “posed”, in some way antique, and therefore black and white. That type of black and white (which was a bit “old”) was to give immediately a certain historic feeling, as if the photographs are already been looked at through the lens of the past, to favour the amazement of the “how we were”.

This is an original shot:

And this is the same shot after photoshop:

So, how did I do all this?

I did more or less as I’ve narrated through the video below here. I say more or less because every photoshoot I do has its own retouch, I never have standards: I therefore tried today to repeat and redo what I’ve done more or less a month ago.

PS: I put some music in the background to render these minutes less boring during this photoshopping thing. I would have chosen another one, but I always give a damn about having this need that everything has to have a sense, and this one has sense…

PS #02: the software which at a certain point appears is this one

during ferragosto for a few days going around with the white polystyrene board in milan’s city centre, with the need to show the peculiar characters that frequent it, while all the others are on holiday.

The presumptuous attempt to fuse the two giants of portraits on location: august sander and the richard avedon of “in the american west”. (with what arrogance do I even get near these masters!)

The idea was to do some kind of “spoon river” but alive, with a representative for every category: the crazy, the unlucky, the hottie, the bourgeois, the mother…

One of the first times that the “corriere della sera” dedicates a full page to a photographic shoot.

A backstage video.

I really like taking portraits around: you can speak to people…

The soulama family

melissa and igor

vittorio

carolina

aldo

josè

claudio and giada

ida

francesco and mattia

michela and francesco

massimo

raffaele

The lemmonier family

raffaele and cristian

The longo family

The rama family

lo

giuseppe

The vedder family

vito

cristiana

zicari and stanghi

rachel and emmanuel

nicola

The davtyan family