NEW YORK BLUES

LORENZO VITALI

// Lorenzo is from Milan, Italy and has been photographing all his life. His photography leans towards the abstract, with a focus on shapes and colours. The photos we share here are from his series of photographs of the iconic New York architecture.

I was born and live in Milan, a large and very stimulating city. I started photographing since I was 8 years old when I was given a Kodak Instamatic, with which I took thousands of slides. Life then took me to work as a doctor in a hospital for many years, but I have never neglected photography. However, in recent years, photography has become my main activity. Creative and experimental, always attentive to new artistic proposals in my environment, I develop the aesthetic sense of my works by combining classic elements and innovation. I pay particular attention to shapes and materiality. I frame my work in a conceptual discourse with a marked tendency towards formal research.

I think a century ago, Man Ray already understood what matters most:

“Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, While others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. ”

Man Ray

What draws you to the arts?

Since I was a boy, the whole world of visual arts had a great fascination for me: visiting the art galleries, of which Italy is so rich, allowed me to get to know the work of the great painters and to form my aesthetic sense. Photographic books and exhibitions have brought me into contact with photographers who have made the history of photography. The aesthetic research of shapes sculpted by light has always attracted my gaze in an irresistible way. As a boy I analyzed reality through the viewfinder of my first Reflex (an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic) and this triggered many stimuli in my mind and many ideas were born. Observing the image projected by my Durst enlarger on the work surface, then seeing it disappear and reappear in the development bath was an intense and unforgettable emotion. The first experiences were in the field of photo reportage and fashion, but I would say that in the course of my life I have explored almost all photographic genres because I am curious. I think this helped me hone my technique.

What do you like about your abstract architecture photo series?

I tried to create a project in which the observer’s attention was focused on the form. The skyscrapers of Manhattan are seen almost as a texture in which the textures vary continuously and the eye is guided only by a blue thread. I particularly enjoyed walking around the city looking for new shooting points, often in high places, to capture these imaginary textures.

New York City, with its impressive skyscrapers, needs no introduction. What is notable about Lorenzo´s series is the clear focus on lines and patterns, on the light catching in windows and on facades and giving the buildings colour. All images in this series are in portrait orientation, as if emulating the buildings in New York City, most of which are indeed higher than they are wide. One might have picked any number of colours in New York City, but Lorenzo chose blue as his primary focus, even as it is at times merely a companion to the brown of bricks or the grey of concrete. In Lorenzo´s words:

When colour interpolates between the architecture standing in front of us, at times, our eyes spot dimensions capable of becoming autonomous from the reality for which that structure was designed. These visionary shapes become the red thread of the narration.

The formal discontinuity of the buildings’ tridimensional volumes is nullified by the creation of a bidimensional map. This therefore allows the use of a unique language in the narration of shapes, thus subduing them to colour. The symbolic aspect of this path backward from the sea to the mountain, seeking the primary source of colour, recalls the imagery of the return to the origin through vertical lines repeating in every image. Consequently, the search for colour (blue in this case) – proceeding from the first to the last image – becomes less and less easy, but it always gives a positive result.

I took the photos in Manhattan using an Olympus OMD EM-1 and a Lumix 35-100 f2.8 lens.

Click on the photos to see the full image with their title.