NICOLA BALDAZZI (Ravenna, Italy)

Biography:

Nicola Baldazzi lives and works in Ravenna (IT). He studied photography with Guido Guidi at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna. He attended workshops with artists and photographers: Alessandro Tosatto, Cesare Fabbri, Andrew Phelps, Marcos Morau, Gerry Johansson, Jason Fulford, Gus Powell, Peter Fraser, Joachim Brohm and Valentina Seidel. In 2013 Osservatorio fotografico published his first book Piccolo prontuario di fotografia segnaletica. Since 2014, he collaborates with Osservatorio fotografico (cultural association and publishing house founded by Cesare Fabbri and Silvia Loddo). He won Giovane Fotografia Italiana (2014), RAM biennial prize (2015), Agarttha arte prize (2018). In 2016 he was selected among international young photographers for the book and group exhibition Abitare il deserto. In 2017 his work was part of the exhibition Dove Viviamo, curated by Silvia Loddo within Street Photography – A Tribute to Everyday Life, Øksnehallen, Copenhagen. He is currently printing his second book He didn’t believe me, a photo-text book with texts by Veronica Lanconelli, published by Osservatorio fotografico.

Artist Statement:

I’m interested in taking pictures of everyday objects, scenes, ordinary events, and see how the camera transforms them, how the most mundane things, when photographed, can become subtly evocative, ironic, mysterious, meaningful. I’m mainly focused on projects that somehow deal with the potential narrative within images and photography’s alleged truthfulness. The photos I’m submitting are from chapter I of my last work He didn’t believe me. They’re all snapshots taken with a 35mm camera by night. The sequence is a sort of dreamy night walking through anonymous city streets, unknown places and strange outskirts.

Practice Statement: How does photographing on film (or using your material photographic process of predilection) inform your artistic practice?

Using analogue cameras implies that time passes from shooting to seeing what you’ve shot. You don’t know exactly how it will look like: you see it later, plus you see the image in a very different context from that where you have taken it: it’s always a surprise, it’s weird. I like shooting with old, almost indestructible cameras, that are relatively simple in technology, as I appreciate simplicity in images that are at the same time subtely compelling, in a way. I like the ‘truthfulness’, the feeling of it, of analogue photography.

http://cargocollective.com/nicolabaldazzi
https://www.instagram.com/nico.baldazzi/