A moment with Paolo Roversi

"My studio is a rectangular room with a high ceiling, 

old wooden parquet flooring, and a large window facing north."

"It is like a tiny theatre with an empty stage,

 a space to be filled, a time yet to be invented, 

a proscenium where everything is possible, 

no trick disallowed, 

where neither seasons, nor days, nor hours exist."

"Here all temporal boundaries dividing life and imitation, 

reality and fiction, dissolve.

Like any art worthy of the name, 

the most brazen lie can evolve into surprising and seductive truth."

  

"The furnishings are modest:  two or three stools, 

a carpet, some chairs, 

two or three lights, and an old blanket, 

which is my favourite backdrop. 

It can be a wall, a road, a field, sky, night, fear, wind… 

a screen for dreams."

"The studio is not only in this room; 

it is anywhere I put my camera on my tripod 

and my tripod on the ground, 

liberating my heart and mind."

"The studio is far more than a workplace or a tool of my trade. 

It is above all a state of being and feeling. 

The studio is everywhere. 

It is the corner of my mind."

"I have a very mystic and spiritual approach to photography, 

which I can't explain, and I don't need to. 

I like to keep things unrevealed,

 I like sometimes to lose myself into the indefinite. 

That often happens to me along the path of beauty, 

without ever truly understanding where to proceed, 

and the further I manage to see, 

the deeper the mystery becomes." 

"Photography goes beyond the limits of reality and illusion. 

It brushes up against another life, another dimension,

revealing not only what is there but what is not there." 

"Every photograph is an encounter, 

an intimate,  reciprocal confession."

"I like long exposures to allow 

the soul all the time it needs to rise to the surface, 

and to let chance have its way.

Always, photographs surprise me; 

they never turn out quite the way I imagine they might.

Every photograph enters the world as a sign of hope."

"It is late, very late. 

Everyone has left, and a strange silence has descended. 

I wander aimlessly around the deserted studio 

trying to bring some order to ideas and objects, 

but the natural and permanent chaos 

exerts its power."

 "I put on my jacket, turn out the light, and close the door. 

But where does the light go? 

Silence… Darkness is the light's silence."

All images & quotes by 

grand master, magician, writer with light 

Paolo Roversi