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Lorenzo Poli
@lorenzopoli.photography
Photographer based in the UK
Extreme curiosity. The desire to explore new dimensions, different cultures. The constant search for our limitations as humans. The richness of Nature, its power, its untamed simplicity and soothing brutality. The sense of surprise and astonishment while discovering the beauty of Mother Earth. This is what inspires me the most and animates every step and photo I take.
"With the camera in my hands, I do things I would never do if I would just be hiking."
Photography is curiosity, the desire for knowledge and the desire of sharing. Photography is a means of capturing scenes and instants that fascinate us. Every time I photograph, I have the opportunity (and I give the opportunity to others) to look at it for a bit longer, to slow down, and to freeze the natural living world. This means that I can also discover what subconscious decision pushed me to take a shot in the first instance, to travel to that specific location where instinct was guiding me.
Whether geological or ice formations, bird migrations, or atmospheric phenomena, photography is an exploration in every sense. Photography amplifies the sensations and the feelings I have in Nature, they are reaching deeper into my emotional sphere – I feel closer to Earth while I photograph Nature.
I have practiced yoga for years, and just like with yoga, photography for me has a sort of spiritual value. While yoga helps me connect with myself, photography helps me blend with Nature. When I am alone in the wilderness, Nature is me and I am Nature.
"By photographing it, I get closer to my inner self, and I feel interconnected with greater harmony."
What I found most exciting about photography is bifold: It gives me a reason to explore and document the natural world, while, in parallel, it allows me to unfold the inner self. When seeing how your emotions on the field translate into an image, I am always stunned and surprised… It’s an incredibly nourishing experience. This is what really drives me to shoot; the feeling that a certain landscape gives me – this is when I press the shutter. Emotion.
If not in sync with myself, the photos that I take do not represent anything to me and they become dull and insignificant. A beautiful picture in my view is when it has the ability to fully communicate that original feeling.
Taking one image does not stop on the field after releasing the shutter. Capturing that emotion and transferring it to others is my final mission. Editing allows me to recreate as genuinely as possible the feelings I had when shooting; I see it as an integral part of the photographic process, focusing on the very basic elements. Nature is too beautiful as it is to be needing to add new dominant components. I tend to instead remove elements from photos:
“How little can a photo contain to communicate the feeling a specific place gave me?” Achieving more with less."
There is a sort of simplification process to make the message more direct and as communicative as possible, which I am fascinated by. I am probably at the opposite spectrum of HDR photography, where all details are brought to life simultaneously. I don’t believe the human eye works that way, nor our brain.
I am intrigued by light and by the lack of light, darkness. There is no light without darkness. Darkness exists in the human eye as our receptors are not able to interpret light stimulus when below few lux levels. Contemporary cameras, long exposures and high sensitivity sensors can “see” even beyond what the human eyes are able to perceive. Recently, I have been reading a few books about the physiology of vision and it is incredible how the brain decodes the visual stimuli to create images in your mind of the outside world.
"Also, I have developed a real fascination for the very feeble last and first light of the day. It gives such a delicate softness to shapes and forms."
Lately I have been wondering what my style should be. Instagram and social media are pushing people to have a consistent style and color range so the feed looks consistent. I thought it could be better not to pursue a style but rather trying to focus on and pursue the best means of communicating emotions via images. And this is my target. Although perhaps it’s early for me to define my style and I am still (and probably always will be) exploring forms of expression. I would love to pursue sensorial photography and even consider including other media above photography to communicate broadly with a viewer.
The Instagram feed consistency is perhaps limiting me from sharing much more work that I would want to share and I am constantly searching for the best ways to include all my different “style explorations” in my photographic language. I found out that a website gives more opportunities to condense temporal bodies of work in a more systematic form, and that is how www.lorenzopoli.photography.com is taking shape.
Actually, for the majority of my life, I have pursued the dream to become an architect. My passion for photography has been always present but discontinuous until 3 years ago, when the passion newly inflamed somehow. The work of Edward Burtynsky, Gursky, Locatelli, the work of and the meeting with Alex Strohl and especially Benjamin Hardman in 2019, plus a video of Vincent Munier, struck me brutally amongst others. But above all, the primitive, raw feeling of untamed wildernesses is what inspires me. I very rarely take photos of human beings, mainly because they divert from the primitive feeling of primordial wildernesses I am seeking. On my website, I have organized some photo series that reflect the archetypal elements which drive my photographic research.
The Planet Earth is finite, although it seems vast and immense. Our actions have repercussions globally. While traveling to places where glaciers are common I noted incredible shrinkage of the glaciers within a couple of years. The plastic bottle we use to drink and litter we leave behind floats in the ocean we swim and gets ingested by the fishes we eat. The Oceans are not as immense as we thought. Until we don’t identify ourselves as one with the Natural Environment we inhabit, we won’t be able to respect Mother Earth, take care of Nature, animals, and ultimately, ourselves. The Earth is our home.
"I have been cultivating the dream to be nomadic(t) for several years now, to make Earth my home in a more complete sense."
Though this is partially incompatible with my architectural career, I saw in Covid the opportunity to work remotely and to get closer to the wilderness and headed to the Scottish Highlands by camper van. For weeks I am accompanied solely by Nature and wild animals, and I never felt alone in their presence. This is just the beginning: I have planned to design my own expedition vehicle to travel across Europe and Asia. A series of circumstances led me to postpone this dream for a few months, but it will happen.
I want to be with Nature. I want to explore it. I want to feel it. I remember a full moon night in Mexico, standing in the Pacific, still. Listening silently to the waves by the shore. The Ocean that night was incredibly mothering, whispering so soothingly. It was reaching out to me with such a delicate warm touch. I never thought that such a powerful entity could communicate in such a tender manner with a human. The Moon was nodding silently with her wise and slow moves across the horizon. The feeling of completeness of that experience, the nobility of feeling so limited in my human essence but so interconnected with Nature was incredible. Such experience, I must admit, changed my perception of the natural world and left me forever curious about what it has to communicate to me, and us.
"By being curious we are able to discover new worlds and possibilities which are normally not visible. “The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity” — Albert Einstein."
My greatest desire is for my photos to be able to ignite the same curiosity in others, to help them really see the primordial and essential elements of Nature and of life, to trigger a desire to explore more the inner self, in order to rediscover and feel interconnected with Mother Nature.
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