MARCO CASTOLDI
Are you vegetarian/would you like to be vegetarian?
Nope, but I rarely eat meat even though I like it. Say once every couple of weeks.
Did you study photography in school?
No, I’m self taught, which doesn’t mean I didn’t study as hard as I could.
A picture that you would love to take.
I don’t have an answer, sorry. I’m not used to design pictures; I’d rather harvest what it may come. Any ruthless effort to foresee a picture seems a poor waste of time to me. Our efforts should be rather directed to listening to what is going on all around. There are plenty of beautiful things going on, even in the emptiest of the street.
Do you sell your prints online? Why?
Not yet to be honest. So far I just have one representative in Milan for a bunch of plates, nevertheless I’m not an opponent to online sales. It’s just the early stage of my career and I need to figure it out.
Have you ever attended photographic workshops?
No, my photography is all about the craft of viewing. I find comfort studying everything which is related to something I may call language, especially painting and painters’ lives. This helps a lot in moving some steps ahead.
Do you like looking at your old pictures?
Hard to say. There was a time when I did not like looking back at old pictures because it seems to me they were exhausted, powerless, so I‘ve never published those images. Then I’ve learnt to publish new pictures only after some months: this timespan is necessary to prevent evaluations which are blinded by fatuous passions. So looking back to my gallery I can recognize an overall coherency – I should say a “voice” – between pictures of 2007 and more recent ones. Part of this coherency, I suppose, is rooted to the fact that I don’t work with a project oriented attitude, I don’t like to switch from subject to subject, I just keep on the same way over and over.
Do you have prints of your works hung on your walls?
Nope, it would be weird.
What social networks are you using? Are they working for your career?
Right now I’m not using any social networks. I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but the social networks I’ve tested during past experiences are not so useful to my art. Both Facebook and twitter can magnify the amplitude of someone’s message and popularity, but on the other hand they shift the communication to a different point. As pictures are uploaded on the social networks, they loose a link with their inherent essence to become something slightly (or completely) different. Pictures are resized, compressed, often no title or caption is written and they start bouncing uncontrolled from user to user. There starts a different language. What I’m trying to say is that on social we have a different experience of art. Think about pictures of Andreas Gursky for instance: it’s impossible to appreciate them at so poor resolutions and it’s even impossible to understand his artistic operation if we forget to account the extraordinary dimensions of his work. Who the hell does post a photograph on Facebook writing down its own physical dimension?
You should reply that we have a different experience via official websites as well, because the screen flattens several attributes of the image, especially the material ones. That’s true, but none can feign to act as we were in the fifties. Internet is – like it or not – something we belong to and we cannot escape (and by god this brings so many positive points in our lives!). That’s why we, as spectators, should be aware of this stuff, remembering that the view mediated by the screen is something necessary but that cannot replace the direct view with an oeuvre.
An artist, in my humble opinion, could not be so naïve to discard his responsibility over the shift in communication. Being a photographer does not mean to snap pictures or manufacturing compelling images, but also to understand the environment in which his work lingers and is included into.
To sum up, I would say that my present concern is not to reach out as much audience as possible without compromise, but to grant the viewer a pleasured relationship with my pictures.
Do you believe in horoscopes?
Not at all.
A picture that is very important for you.
“Since you’ve been gone (boat shivering), Italy – 2011.”
I remember I was attending a wedding party that time. It was July 26th. It was hot and the sun setting. You should still hear people eating and dancing and raise glasses on my back as I quit the party, go out, cross the street and seat on the riverside grass. I was feeling happy for the bride and the groom who are good friends of mine, but somewhere deep I was also feeling something wrong with me, my memories.
I kept staring the water flowing while a summer storm kept approaching. Soon the rain would be there, threatening the fine suits of the wedding guests. I set my tripod and wait the right feeling to come. I hung there until I felt a connection with a forgotten part of myself.
The pictures is about a tiny riverboat which shivers with the blowing wind while downpour was flushing. I thought that our life sometimes is shaken by forces we cannot control, neither see, like that unaware canoe. So it’s all about floating. It’s all about a knowledge of the unknowable. It’s all about letting it go. Let it go.
(the picture is the 5th above, ndr)
Your comfy food.
It would be such a pity to pick up just one. I love food, Italian and foreign: I barely find something I dislike. I thought a lot about dishes of my youth and my trips and I hardly found one comfy food to put on top. I think that we Italians appreciate a lot the broad variety we have on our tables: hundreds of breads types, cold cuts, cheese, vegetables, fruits, pastas and whatever else we can eat according to the season and the region.
Are you currently planning any trip?
I’m always planning trips! It’s such a pleasure. But I don’t take pictures during holidays, I’m not able to. I just take pictures of my homeland or places I’m acquainted to. Beside my main focus, the foreign areas which I would like to explore most, during the next years, are the Balkans, Eastern Europe and France.
The photographer you would like to spend time working with.
I’m able to work only by myself, alone. Good company is counterproductive to me. My main concern is not the image, rather, I love the experience of taking my time, strolling around during early morning or late nights, in the cold of winter or foggy days, giving myself the chance and the privilege to disclose what is there in front of me which is, most of the times, something absolutely ordinary. Photography is resistance of ever getting used.
However, I must confess that what I miss the most is an authentic relationship with someone who stands in my shoes, gives pieces of advice about what I’m doing or about to do, a wise friend who can be a guiding star and a support in conceptual issues. I don’t mind whether this person is a photographer or not, maybe I would me more comfortable with a person of culture – whatever it means – since my operations lay on the blurred border between photography and all the other narrative languages.
What is the best photographic book you have seen and why.
I guess it could be “Ratcliffe Power Station” by Michael Kenna, if the deal is amongst the books with standard circulation. On the other hand I’m more and more prone to pay attention to hand-bound books in very few editions, not because they are collectable but because they have more layers of poetry.
website: marcocastoldi.net
blog: marcocastoldi.net/blog
email: info@marcocastoldi.net
