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Luigi, Celine, Kunal, Saana
28 May 2010
There is a lot going on with the ITS photography finalists and this is the first of a series of articles we'll write throughout the year to let you know what is going on in their professional lives!
We'll start out with Finnish ITS#EIGHT MINI Clubman Photo Award Winner
Saana Wang. Surely you itsweb aficionados read about the amazing photography tour she went on with iconic photographer Ari Marcopoulos with the behind-the-scenes contribution of renowned Italian photographer Alberto Novelli in the region of l'Aquila, Italy, struck by a terrible earthquake on 6 April 2009 (you can read the article
here). We organised the whole production of the tour which took place last September. It was a very emotional trip for everyone involved, a difficult yet life-changing experience that will not be forgotten. Pictures on camera but also pictures engraved in the minds of those who took part. This unique photoshoot turned into a very special exhibition presented in Milan on 8 - 12 March 2010 organized by GQ Italy and MINI.
Luigi Corda is last year's photography finalist who did an amazing project on 100 Sardinian centenarians. The photos were incredibly powerful black and white portraits of faces that witnessed two world wars and a huge number of changes, people who were born when the word "computer" didn't even exist. The original idea was for the project to turn into a book, and that's what Luigi committed to entirely after participating in ITS#EIGHT. When Luigi first came up with this idea and started working on it, the hardest thing to do was to track down the place where these centenarians lived. It took him two years to take all of the pictures collected in the book. When he did get to the town or village, he then found the person he was looking for very easily. Because they are considered true stars in their villages and everybody knows them.
Each picture in the book is presented with a brief note on the person in the portrait, and among these are anecdotes and the fondest memories of each of them. Reading some of them can leave one completely speechless with a funny smile on one’s face: "She remembers how her father was so attached to his car, an old Fiat Balilla, that he buried it in a field instead of giving it away" or "She has only cried once, when her husband died" and "When her husband gave her her first washing machine, she got very angry because she saw it as a slight criticism thinking she wasn't good enough at washing. Even after many years she didn't trust the machine 100%, so she would wash the clothes by hand before putting them in the washing machine".
Luigi Corda's book "100 Centenarians" was published in December 2009 and printed by A.Pizzi, an historical printing company that has worked with the likes of Salvador Dalì, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz...a wonderful autographed copy sits in a special spot of our library.
There's much more to see on Luigi's work on his several websites (for instance, he is a long-time surf photographer...):
www.luigicorda.it,
www.surfinginsardinia.com.
Photographer
Céline Clanet presented her "Maze" project at ITS#SEVEN. A travel reportage on Lapland that turned into an opportunity for knowledge, taking her to the edge of the continent above the arctic circle to a small village called Maze to meet with everything that separates the arctic culture from our own and appreciating differences. Céline continued to work on this project for quite a long time, sending us updates on the new pictures she produced, that you can see here. Last year she also won the Critical Mass Book Award and the Lucie Award (People/Culture prize) in the USA and worked hard to prepare the photographic book "Maze", which should already be out. Recently (27 February - 4 April), only 100km away from the village that inspired it all, she had an exhibition with the Lapland reportage. Please do her photos justice and have a proper look at her website
www.celinette.com.
With photographer
Kunal Basu we go back to the very roots of ITS#PHOTO: He was a finalist at the first edition of our photography competition way back at ITS#FOUR in 2005. The project he presented then was, in some ways, at the root of what he is working on now. Similarly, those pictures would mark a strong contrast between foreground and background, juxtaposing contrasting elements to create a storyline. A graduate of London College of Fashion, Kunal wrote us that ITS#FOUR changed the course of his professional career and also the way he looked at his own photographic work. He was able to clearly identify his own style and that lead him to several other projects, exhibitions and achievements in the UK, in Germany and India, to where he finally returned in 2008. Since then he has been working on his own projects, particularly on surrealism.
His current ongoing project blends surreal, stylized images of dolls with mundane surroundings. The combination resulted in a series of individual stories that try to subvert or sometimes defy the popular culture of beauty and its expectations. More of his work can be found on his website:
www.kunalbasuphotography.com.
This just a taste of what some photography finalists from past editions are working on currently, stay tuned for a lot more!
