Photographer and Artist Alessandro Giugni is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘ Colori Sospesi nel Tempo. Geometrie di un’Isola (Colors suspended in time. Geometries of an Island) ’. To see Alessandro’s body of work, click on any photograph.

The work Colori Sospesi nel Tempo. Geometrie di un’Isola (Colors suspended in time. Geometries of an Island) stems from an intuition I had in July 2020 during a trip I made to the Island of Burano after many years of absence from that place.

What had changed in me on that occasion compared to the last time I had visited that place was the critical approach with which, after specializing in reportage, I began to look at the reality around me. Today, I am no longer a mere spectator of the world and the events that take place in it, but a careful observer and curious seeker of the innermost reasons behind all the facets, even the most apparently trivial, of everyday life. This approach allows me not only to discover singular aspects of the lives of the people I frequent and the history of the places I visit, but at the same time ensures that I can create wide-ranging photographic projects.

With reference to the Island of Burano, I discovered that the bright colors of the houses that adorn it were the result of the inhabitants’ desire to allow those who were engaged in fishing for moeche (small crabs typical of the Venetian lagoon) to find their homes after long night fishing sessions, even in the thick fog that frequently grips these places during the long winter months. Each family, therefore, has been assigned a unique shade of color.

Since this is an island that, despite its small size, attracts an average of one and a half million tourists every year, I wanted to essentialise the presence of human beings as much as possible, focusing on the interconnection between natives and their pastel-coloured homes. So, I searched around me for everyday objects (such as bicycles, slippers, chairs, shoes, clotheslines, clothes hanging in the wind, brooms) and, playing on the contrast between the colors of the houses and the presence of the aforementioned objects, I created a story that transcends the boundaries of the physical world and rises to a dimension that I would call metaphysical, in a succession of photographs of places that seem suspended in time.

In December 2022, a photograph taken from this work and entitled Human Absence was awarded by the Municipality of Florence, in the presence of the highest Florentine authorities, with a prestigious recognition of international caliber, the Fiorino d’Argento. This recognition was attributed to me during the award ceremony of the XXXIX Edition of the Florence Prize in the spectacular setting of the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio, where the above-mentioned photograph was also exhibited in the form of a Fine-Art print on baryta paper in a 30x45cm format.

Artist Statement 

My name is Alessandro Giugni and I am a reportage photographer. I am 28 years old, I graduated in Law with top marks from the University of Milan, I am the owner of a historic coffee production company (originally founded by my grandfather) and for over 15 years I have been assiduously engaged in the study and deepening of every single aspect of photography in general. In recent years I have found my genre of reference in reportage, resulting in some works that have been both published and exhibited in numerous museum exhibitions in Italy and Europe. 
I love photography due to the fact that I consider this art form as much a means of expressing myself as the main vehicle through which to narrate our time. If I had to give a definition of my way of photographing, I would answer that I feel the need to tell the story of human beings contextualized in the time in which we live, without hiding their strengths and weaknesses. My photographic works are never children of chance: I love observing society, its evolutions, the behavior and expressions of the people around me, thus giving life to reasoned projects that are the result of meticulous study. Over the years, I have dedicated myself almost exclusively to black and white and have begun to use film more and more frequently, eventually becoming my main medium. This choice depended on several factors: the nonimmediate visualization of the shots, the pleasure of confronting chemistry, the desire to master every stage of the creative process, and learning how to also manage the development phase as required. Through film, moreover, it is possible for me to build a 'material' archive, which would otherwise be impossible to achieve through the digital medium alone.

All images and text © Alessandro Giugni