Le foto(copie) di Samuele Piccoli

© Samuele Piccoli

Samuele Piccoli works mixing photography, photocopies, transfer techniques, collage and painting. The transfer of photocopies of photographs on drawing paper, using cleaning fluid/trichloroethylene or acetone, creates images with a pictorial look that I find very interesting. Samuele Piccoli then adds onto these photocopied photos some external elements, be they purely pictorial, collage, hand drawn, or brush strokes. He creates images which are half way between photography and painting, pictorialism and modernism.

When I met him he accepted to not only have a chat about Camera Obscura, but also to explain in detail the technical procedure he uses, which had raised my curiosity.

Fabiano Busdraghi: How did you start to take photographs? What’s your story as a photographer?

© Samuele Piccoli

Samuele Piccoli: First of all I think I am more of an experimenter, rather than a proper photographer. I don’t want to limit myself in any way, so until possible, I want to escape the trap of definitions and categories.

Nevertheless, my story begins in the most classic of ways: around the age of 18 my uncle gave me an old, completely manual Russian reflex. I perfectly remember the joy I felt as I experienced placing images in focus, and that first experience opened up a whole new world for me. I then began my “career” as a classic lover of photography, inspired by shots in the National Geographic, until I had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting someone who opened my eyes on the ability of photography to look into your soul. I discovered a new world, all my preconceptions fell, my certainties crumbled, and all canons were overturned. The photographs became mine, whether one liked it or not.

© Samuele Piccoli

Fabiano Busdraghi: How was your series of photographs/photocopies born?

Samuele Piccoli: It was a slow evolution, but it all goes back to my passion for the pinhole images. This miraculous instrument of expression (one should glorify it) allowed me to appreciate the work of Paolo Gioli, to discover the wonderful world behind polaroids, and most of all, to begin to experiment in a new discipline (that of polaroids) which was for me completely new.

One afternoon I was taking a pinhole macro polaroid of a rose, and as I was about to tear the negative from the positive, as usual, I realised that the movement wasn’t new to me. In fact it wasn’t. I had repeated that simple and dull movement hundreds of times, during my years in primary school. In fact we would often use acetone to transfer images from magazines to drawing paper, to later draw around them. When the acetone was dry, the parts of the magazine were then torn off just as you tear off a Polaroid. A simple and marvellous act, all in one.

© Samuele Piccoli

This opened up an infinite number of new paths to follow, and I was thrilled, to say the least. However, the project was only at draft level, I had discovered the technique but had to find the message that suited the procedure best. Instinct and passion did the rest of the work.

A part from photography, I am an admirer of painting, and in that same day I was struck by a portrait by Sergio Flori and a photo by Claude Cahun very similar to a photocopy, and the epiphany occurred. I started to select various subjects from my archive, I photocopied them and transferred them on drawing paper. The results were encouraging, but too complacent. One day I found myself in front of a piece by Araki, I observed it, studied it, admired it. That technique gave me the courage and I finally decided to violate the last of seals: the sacredness of emulsion. From the overcoming of the last barrier, free from all conditionalities, I created these photo(copie)s.

© Samuele Piccoli

Fabiano Busdraghi: This return to a gesture that belongs to your childhood, a sort of memory that remained in the movement of your hands, is very interesting. Can you expand on this subject?

Samuele Piccoli: I admit that I like to go against the tide, I don’t reject modernity a priori, I’d be crazy, but I love to use my hands, and not only the index in my right hand. I find great satisfaction in building what I need with the few tools available in my garage and with the help of others.

Maybe no one thinks about it, but I often realise that I tend to ignore the senses (tact and smell) because of the speed, but also the superficiality, with which we are forced to live. I am often in a hurry even while dedicated to a hobby, and most of all, I don’t stop to see the panorama that I’ve left behind me.

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