Luigi Testa dreams of summer and the islands of the world as a place to reconnect with nature. Waiting to exhibit at Liquida PhotoFestival from May 5 until May 22. Collater.al asked the photographer a few questions about his sense of melancholy, loneliness and Pantelleria as a place of dreams.

1. You are one of the photographers selected for Liquida Exhibition, tell us about the project you will exhibit in Turin.

My project, “Nature,” is a work still in development. It is an idea that was born, as the title suggests, from my love for nature. The intent is to tell the relationship between man and nature, in this case the main theme is loneliness, the kind of loneliness not necessarily dictated by being alone and isolated from the rest, but the feeling that you feel even being surrounded by other similar (whether men or trees)..

2. “Look Beyond” is the theme of Liquida Photofestival 2022, what does “looking beyond” mean to you when you photograph?

Looking beyond for me means to pause, to give importance to what seems obvious to us. The sublimation of the common is a process as difficult to put into practice as satisfying and bewitching if done correctly. Look Beyond therefore means slowing down, taking your time to enjoy what we have available to us all and every day, in this case nature.

3. What would you like people to hear when they look at your photos?

Looking at my photos I would like the viewer to feel peace, tranquility, like a sigh of relief that for a moment can help not to think of anything else. All seasoned with a little melancholy.

4. What places you have not yet been to would you like to photograph in the future and why?

I am a sea lover and therefore my natural habitat is the islands. I would like to be able to visit and photograph them all (I know it’s a dream). Going in order, however, I would say Pantelleria is one of the few Italian islands that I miss and, not to go too far away, I would continue with Spain and Greece.

You say in your Instagram bio that “unfortunately it’s not always summer,” is that because of its aesthetic imagery or because of the feelings and memories it evokes?

This question could have a thousand valid answers for me. Very trivially, as I said before, I love the sea and the islands, I believe that summer is their period of maximum splendor for life, colors and scents. Remaining in the photographic field I would like it to be always summer because I like to photograph with the sun, at any time from dawn to dusk, then because in summer we are all a little more beautiful and happy and nature gives the best of itself. The last reason I wish it was always summer is that I suffer from “winter sadness” and to summarize barbarously: I feel better in summer!

For millennia, the fascination associated with the deep and the underwater world more generally has created myths and mysterious figures. The absence of gravity and the weightlessness of bodies in water creates the feeling of a magical environment, in which the body loses its nature, even when stripped of everything, as in Ed Freeman‘s shots.
Photographing the subaqua environment is challenging and rewarding, especially if one has to capture the movements of bodies and their fluidity. It is the suspension of movement that is the most fascinating aspect of the work of the photographer, who also worked as a musician in the past, and as a road manager on the Beatles’ last tour.
The Underwater series was shot in Los Angeles swimming pools, using only natural light and the reflections the rays cause underwater, with retouching enhancing the rendering and sharpening the aquatic landscape. The delicacy of the bodies makes them almost ethereal and celestial, painted by a seventeenth-century painter and enveloped in a mysterious grace that leaves no room for misreadings in the way of treating what is for all intents and purposes nude photography.

Check out all of Ed Freeman’s work on his Instagram profile or at the artist’s official website.

San Francisco is one of the most fascinating cities in the United States; over the course of two centuries it has experienced the entire evolution of American civilization firsthand, fostering the birth of artistic and cultural currents that have marked the ages.
The history of San Francisco and the Bay Area more generally is now told in a beautiful volume published by Taschen and entitled “San Francisco. Portrait of a City.” Through 500 photographs it traces the early years of industrial development and the stories of the free spirits of the 1970s through the lights and fervor of the Roaring Twenties.

The volume contains images from archives and private collections, taken by some of the most celebrated photographers, who over the course of their careers have been inspired by the California city. Inside are portraits of the many innovators who have contributed to the development of the city, a place that represents “a crystal ball in which to see a preview of what will come to us in a few years,” as Michele Masneri had described it in The Passenger magazine’s recent volume devoted to the city.
The 480-page collected shots also show a city skyline far from the one we know today, dominated by the Golden Gate Bridge of which construction work from the 1930s is visible. In addition to the Bay Area’s unique climate, “San Francisco. Portrait of a City” also shows areas the multicultural soul of the city, with images of the huge Chinatown district or Fillmore, the one historically home to Jews and Japanese.
You can purchase the book on the official Taschen website.

Hashira Yamamoto is a photographer, but he also describes himself as a traveler and researcher. Over the course of his career as an artist, he has visited 41 countries and 161 cities around the world, in which he has shot some of his photo series, to tell stories i cultures and of all the incredible people he has encountered. Over the years he has had a close look at his home nation of Japan, cultivating a passion for traditional landscapes along the Silk Road.
Yamamoto in his Asuka series has reinterpreted the tradition of historic Japanese buildings through an infrared lens, creating a dialogue between ancient and contemporary Japan to an effect that immerses traditional temples and gardens in a glitchy, vaporwave world.

The saturated colors of the photos alter the perception of a solid tradition that in some respects has remained intact over the centuries. Cultural references are not altered, architectures are not emptied of meaning, but rather taken in a new contemporary guise. Hashira Yamamoto had precisely the goal with this infrared lens to enhance even more the quiet and contemplative magic that testifies to the inherent spirituality of the places photographed.