Giuseppe Gradella is an Italian photographer based in Mantua who has the great ability to convey his emotions through the photographic genre of portrait photography. The artist’s favourite atmospheres capture the moods and overlook the figures portrayed, managing to dig deep into the souls of his characters.

We at Collater.al asked Giuseppe to tell us his story through an interview, which you can find below:

How long have you been in photography? How did you start?

I’ve been working in photography since 2014, not long. I graduated in architectural design and worked as an architect until two years ago. I started my photographic career by initially shooting the architectures of some of my colleagues, then I moved on to portrait, fashion and then to many other things, relatively quickly.

Your images are very elegant, what led you to define your style?

Thank you first of all for considering them elegant. What led me to define my style are mainly my studies in art history and architecture. I deeply love art in general, I find inspiration in the great masters, but also in many unknown artists, but very good in my opinion.

I forgot, cinema, some films still influence me today, I often go back to see some clips just to refresh my memory, an impression. Even my dreams, especially those that come back over the years, greatly influence the atmosphere of some of my portraits. I obviously also add books, I think that a certain type of photography comes closer to the written word than to painting.

Is there a particular shot that influenced your gaze?

There are many of them and most of the images that influenced me are not photographs, but if I have to think of a particular photograph, the first thing that comes to mind is a portrait of a young Bob Dylan taken by Richard Avedon: he, the minstrel, with a short dark coat in the middle of the frame, on a cobblestone wet by the rain…everything fades into the rainy atmosphere except the subject, perfectly focused in his loneliness.

Most of your subjects are women: what message do you want to communicate them and what kind of femininity?

I don’t know sincerely what kind of femininity I want to convey in my photos, it’s my way of communicating certain distances and apneas, I don’t like screamed things, I like silence. I need to feel the breaths, which in many portraits are deliberately held back, the rest are expressions of my feelings and my fears, the female figure is a perfect transference of my most intimate feeling.

What are your plans for the future?

I just realized for the first time the direction of photography for the promotional video of Parma Capitale della Cultura Italiana 2020, they called me 5 groups before shooting, I was very scared, but in the end I had a lot of fun and I think I did a good job, I hope that in my near future there will be a bit of cinema!

Follow Giuseppe’s take over on @Collater.al Instagram profile!