10 Questions with Massimiliano Cambuli

Massimiliano Cambuli is a photographer who lives and works between Brussels (Belgium) and Cagliari (Italy).

He first approached photography in his sociology studies in France while studying Roland Barthes' semiotics at the Denis Diderot University in Paris. Thereafter he developed a growing personal interest in visual language and photography.

After attending masterclasses on documentary photography, including at the Italian photojournalism agency Parallelozero's, he studied at the one-year Fine Art Academy in Cagliari. He has been pursuing both documentary and visual narrative works ever since.

He is currently working on long-term projects focused on identity and memory. His works have been exhibited and screened in galleries, exhibitions, and festivals in Italy, Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, the USA, and Japan, and published in photography magazines.

www.massimilianocambuli.com

ARTIST STATEMENT

While chasing beauty - far beyond dominant aesthetical standards, though, his pictures combine conceptual and visual aspects to encompass a message and a story to tell. His recent body of work focuses on nudity, which is not the core of his works but rather a phase: “just a narrative ploy,” he says. In a mix of exploration, experimentation, and research, he pushed these works to the extreme borders of graphisms to transfigure reality and drive the viewer beyond aestheticisms. Although visually different from his former documentary works, either way, he practices photography as a universal language to question contemporary issues and grab the zeitgeist beneath the surface. In this approach, he declares he sticks to Irish poet Brendan Kennelly’s statement, according to which the way to serve the time one lives, is to betray it.

Masks off!, Photography (print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag), 2022 © Massimiliano Cambuli

INTERVIEW

Please, introduce yourself to our readers. You studied sociology before turning to photography. How did you start getting involved with art?

I'm a great photography lover and a second-life photographer. Actually, my professional field relies on the EU's laws and policies, which is the domain I have been studying and dealing with since I was a university student. Nonetheless, I've been engaged in photography since I came across it when I studied social science in Paris while graduating in political science, which is my core background. Semiotics was part of the programme. In this course, I learnt photography as an area of university education that can also be used as a social research method and a visual sociology tool. Later on, when I started travelling considerably outside Europe, both for professional reasons and for my personal interest, I used photography to explore the countries I visited and witness the issues I bumped into. I then decided to go deeper into photography by attending the one-year-long Fine Art Academy photography school in my hometown, Cagliari. I've been working both on documentary and visual narrative works ever since.

How much of your background do you put into your photography? Does it influence your work, and how?

It certainly does. Pictures indirectly reveal the photographer's background, personality, and stance.
My studies in political science and social science have been an open window to the world. They stirred up my cultural curiosity as well as my personal points of view. This kind of education provides a wide set of observation instruments to look at our times and our society.
Furthermore, I spent a period of my life in France, which is a country where photography and visual art enjoy high consideration and significant attention, combined with critical thinking.
This set of experiences is part of me and presumably molds my works as a consequence.

How would you define yourself as an artist? And what do you think differentiates you from the others?

I'm aware that producing a body of work in order to showcase it to an audience finally brings about the "artist" label. Nonetheless, I don't consider myself as an artist. I always think as a photographer and not in terms of art, including when I decide to reinterpret reality in front of my camera as I recently did.
Photography is mainly a matter of observation and communication. What differentiates photographers is one's own personal vision, which is a mix of viewpoints and intents. Joel Meyerowitz said photography is about ideas rather than pictures, and I couldn't agree more. The starting point is where the photographer's eyes lay. As to my work, I don't specifically aim at any differentiation, I think it comes by itself. I'm rather interested in perspectives that investigate "shadow zones". Pictures have several layers of interpretation, and the same goes for reality. As the sheer appearance of reality has little to say and rarely speak true, the surface has to be scraped. I look for a sort of underlying layer, a kind of subtext. I think this is what marks my approach and my work.

You mainly work with photography, dealing with photo fine art photography, as well as reportage and documentary. Why did you choose this medium? And what does it mean to you?

I chose this medium because it's a universal, immediate, and direct language. As such, it's a sort of lingua franca between people regardless of one's education, economic condition, nationality, or moral belief. It's a different kind of conversation with the advantage of skipping words, which are much more likely to wrap, hide, alter, and mystify reality. It's also an amazing tool to investigate the world.
Photography requires tension for communication and having something to say, otherwise it's just a mere pressing a button for the sake of posting on Instagram. For all these reasons, it's the medium that better fits me, and I feel totally comfortable with.
To me, photography is both an outlet for my curiosity and an expression tool. It also means passion, freedom, exploration, and the possibility of freezing in a frame what draws my attention and fits what I want to say. It's an exciting and awesome challenge.

At Nora’s house #1, Photography (print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag), 2021-2022 © Massimiliano Cambuli

Where did you get your inspiration from, both visually and conceptually? Are there any artists or photographers you particularly look up to?

I mainly get inspired by zeitgeist in its widest sense, which I combine with hints from life facts as well as social issues, history, literature, essays, movies, paintings, and even music. All of them are sources of inspiration. I just follow my interests and my vein. I only work at stories I find worth telling, I really like, and I feel I can say something about.
As concerns artists and photographers to look up to, as I constantly attend photo exhibitions, festivals, as well as seminars and photo reviews, I have a very long list of photographers I do appreciate. Yet I don't make them a reference or try and get visual inspiration from them. I'm rather interested in investigating their approach and photographically thinking like they do, which is much more captivating than trying to reproduce the way they shoot.

In your statement, you mention working with nude photography at the moment but specify it is not the core of your works, "rather a phase". Why did you choose to shift from documentary to nude? And what messages do you want to convey with these photos?

I shifted from documentary to nudes as my visual language moved from pure reportage to photographic art. I wanted to free myself from reportage and renew my visual approach, thus making it more creative than a documentary. This was necessary to underpin the narrative beyond the pictures. I didn't change the main topic, though, which is the human condition. Nudity means the lack of any single human product, be them clothes, or social, cultural, and moral constructs. If we see it in these terms, nudity is the symbol of an individual's quintessence. It thus served me to portray women's freedom in opposition to social conditioning. Bodies talk. I also intended to depict an idea of femininity based on elegance and grace, which make its beauty beyond any cultural and moral barrier, as nudity still is. In a nutshell, I challenged the viewer to dig deeper, see what's beyond a human body and "listen" to the women portrayed and to their stories.
I called it a phase because these shots are part of a four-chaptered femininity-focused body of work where I've played with colours and pushed the pictures to the extreme borders of graphism. I reduced them to very essential forms and lines to make them stick to the storylines I wanted to tell. These pictures are pieces of a deliberately aesthetic work having both a high component of experimentation and research and a robust message.
This body of work has been a breaking point compared to my previous works as well as the next ones I'll work on, both in terms of issues tackled and aesthetic outline. As such, it couldn't be but a phase.

At Nora’s house #3, Photography (print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag), 2021-2022 © Massimiliano Cambuli

Tell us more about your creative process. What are the steps that lead you to the final work?

The preparatory phase is essential. I always start with an idea that has to intrigue me. I first draft a concept where I make clear how my pictures will be visually developed, both aesthetically and in their narrative line.
So far, my approach has been typically project-based rather than focused on stand-alone pictures. My shootings stem from a will to tell a story, to convey a mood, to deliver some information or even all of this. In the second stage, I decide how to visually depict the concept. The aesthetics serves to give it a visual form, which means the shooting has to be made accordingly. In this regard, I allow myself to experiment and lead personal research to better express what I want to.
At the end of the process, I analyze the final result, which is expected to fit my starting intents. In case it doesn't, I start over or drop the project. Aesthetics is far from being the starting point, it's rather the final crash test.
Actually, the shooting itself is only a part of the game. The real thing of photography is the visual implementation of an idea.

In summing up your vision, you quote an Irish poet. Do you see a special relationship between photography and literature or between text and pictures? And what does this quote mean to you and your works? How can this quote be tracked in your works?

Photography is a fully-fledged language meant to depict and investigate our world in space and time with no exclusions. As such, it is in relation to all art, including literature. Photography and literature are both capable of exploring whatsoever topic and are both meant to tell stories about the human condition – which is indeed their core mission. As to the relationship with the text, I do see it since myself I tend to complement images with it, both within the frame and outside, as is the case for title and synopsis, and more seldom captions. The text itself is part of the artistic choices a project is made of. At the same time, it's up to the photos to talk and have a leading voice, title and synopsis being just a complement.
As concerns Brendan Kennelly's quote, I interpret it in the sense that at any moment, society and any single component of it have their flattering self-representation, which doesn't represent their deep essence, but only its convenient, flat and phony side. Reproducing society's self-description is none of the artists' business.
As photographers, we produce today tomorrow's archives, which will need a wider range of perspectives than the fake narrations and contrived story-telling we face on a daily basis.

La danseuse #3, Photography (print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag), 2019 © Massimiliano Cambuli

Photography is a visual art, and as such, it is expected to please the eye. It is also a medium to deliver communication. Does one aspect prevail over the other in your works? And how do you combine aesthetics and communication?

I always use photography as a communication medium, yet at the same time, I'm sensitive to aesthetics too. I love beauty, and I seek it out. I have my personal view on what is deemed beauty, though. Photography is meant to find it where one wouldn't expect it or wouldn't recognize it at first glimpse. Actually, beauty doesn't even necessarily have to fit common aesthetical standards. Single-patterned beauty benchmarks make no sense.
Having said that, aesthetics in itself is a key element, but beauty is none the goal of photography, which is mainly food for thought. Aesthetics has to accompany and help the picture's contents. In my works, I want these two components to be consistent and support each other. The image alone has little meaning without the story or message it encompasses. Not necessarily this message has to be explicit. My ideal photography project doesn't state any clear meanings or visual narratives but leaves them to the viewer's chase and interpretation.

Lastly, what are you working on now? Do you have any new projects or exhibitions you would like to share with our readers?

At present, I'm working on several long-term projects about memory and identity. Some of them will be shot in Sardinia, the spellbound place I come from that underwent a significant transformation in a very short time. Others are being shot here and there in Europe when time and occurrences permit me to. In some works, I will challenge myself with the post-photography language, which is something I'm particularly interested in and that fits the core project ideas I'm working at. They will take some time to be accomplished. As to exhibitions, at this moment, "At Nora's house" is being exhibited at the Contemporary Photography Gallery in Budapest. My ultimate and experimental project, "Personne," is in the pipeline to be exhibited too, yet no date has been scheduled. The rest remains to be discovered.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.

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