© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

What was your everyday life like before you identified as an artist or a photographer? Did your initial environment influence your perspective? Was there a distinct catalyst or experience that pushed you towards an artistic path?

Pietro Motisi (PM). This is quite a hard question for me. I do not think I ever had a “everyday life” as anyone can relate to. No routine, no habits, no stable life. I think I am a survivor: my sensibility has been armed by some parts of my early life experience and I could probably say that finding a “creative” way out, a valve, has been something that saved a big part of my existence, but, on the other side, it represents a source of other big problems even if more interesting than other. My initial environment was just something to escape from. The only things I can recognize are a certain sensibility and some other genetic characteristics I recognize in myself today that are originally from where I grew up. I’ve been pushed by myself toward a place of peace and serenity, stuff that still I have not completely found today even if everything inside me is much solid and serene. Being an artist I suppose has been a big collateral effect.

Tell us something about your educational path and if it has informed your journey at all? Anyone has been instrumental in guiding your visual consciousness and practical evolution?

PM: I can define myself as a curious person. I do love to observe and try to understand how things work, how they are made. And I do like to do that on little things/objects as well as it happens on wider systems, like we can assume the places and spaces are. My path has been quite various: I got a degree as an electrical engineering technician and at the same time I used to study classical guitar at the conservatory. Then I studied Forestal Science and Natural Science at the University in Palermo, never completing my studies. In 2009 I was admitted to the course of Documentary Photography at the UWN and finally I got a degree in photography, even if I started the course with the intention of becoming a “professional photographer” but the path made me an author. In the meanwhile I became a designer and craftsman of a little brand I founded of leather crafts…
I believe that the course in photography gave me a lot of tools and consciousness about the medium, the use of it and the ability to understand how to make it work aligned with my inner vision. I finished this course in 2012 but I started taking photos ten years before, so I was looking for something like a personal language I could say I finally found and started following thanks to that University. The curiosity towards different things gave me a sort of wide spectrum of ingredients of the human experience and in the end a photographic lens and a light sensitive emulsion gave me a “new place” to fix and reflect on it.

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

What are the themes that interest you, what generally attracts your observation?

PM: I think my instinct is attracted by the interstices of daily life, those spaces and places usually under everyone’s eyes but invisible because of the habits, because of the rush that comes from a pushing system, because we stopped taking the time to look at the flowers, to appreciate the time required to make certain things in a proper way, simple things, like breathing, cooking, hugging. I am interested in how the places look like, how it is possible to find into them our imprint, the identity of who lives around there, the identity of our society in the present days. I am interested in the present. I have no interest for the past as a mere melancholic mechanism or even just as something that has already gone. At the same time I do not have particular interest for the future. In my practice it is important to fix a moment in the present, to be able to stop and reflect. What am I looking at? What does it mean? Who did that in such way and why? does it make sense? and if so, what kind of sense? It is a matter of a community or a thing important just for the profit of few people? or just one person?
I am interested also in all those things that show a place out of its cliché, offering a wider vision and more informations about why and how a place/space is as it is.

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

What is your approach to the medium? Do you privilege any camera or process in particular? How do you envision or conceptualize the projects?

PM: My photography is usually quite static, so I do love to use medium format / large format film cameras in order to get as much quality and details as possible into my frame. I do prefer color and not much high in contrast and saturation so I overexpose my films quite a lot. In the last ten years I literally fell in love with a camera that I call “my wife” and I can hardly think that other photos taken with other cameras can have a value or be recognized as “my photos”. It is a Mamiya 7 that I normally use with an 80mm lens, and sometimes with the 65mm. I am aware that this thing could be a limit toward challenging the visions and I am already trying and testing if this ‘habit’ is a static comfort zone or something that just make my work consistent. In the end I honestly don’t care. The camera and the result on film really makes me feeling good and give back a result that I feel very close to my soul intentions. I recently started painting with watercolors and for similarity I do appreciate a lot the results given by a ‘46 Leica Barnack camera. I also shot with point and shoot film camera or other 35mm reflex usually with black and white film, but I consider it as a sort of underground training to keep the feeling on the use of the camera and to take notes of my personal life. Maybe that stuff will come out of the archive one day.
Every project requires a preliminary research to be done around the elements that compose the reality we’ll be exploring. That research allows us to find highlights in the topic that of course also encounter our own feelings, vision and experience. Then I believe that the immersion into the spaces of our subject it is fundamental to find actual elements of expression that can be used as parts of the project to build. So for me there is a bit of fatalism together with the idea of approaching all of my project as pieces of a unique wider vision.

Have you undertaken projects or tasks that required you to venture into unfamiliar territories, physically or emotionally? If so, how do you cope with the uncertainties and daunting photo ventures? What have been some defining challenges or milestones on your artistic path?

PM: Yes, it happened both physically and emotionally. With the project Zen 2 for example I got access in a very difficult area of my city, Palermo. Even if I gained trust from the locals and I could go around taking photographs I have to say that I was not feeling immune from the energy of the spaces and the people living in there within their life troubles. Every time I was going back home I had the feeling that I was leaving more than I was taking. Also I realize how not interested I was in taking photos of people and of their personal life, to show and offer them to other people maybe comfortably sitting on their sofa in a warm place. Another example comes from another project I was developing in Wales at the same time, spending time with local people and becoming friends. Those people allowed me to get access into their private life, into their little everyday good and bad things and I started reflecting deeply about my role and how much my empathy was taking up space. After I lost two of those guys I was photographing I decided to stop making projects showing other people's lives and to concentrate on the spaces, in order to offer places to reflect on ourselves and on our way of living and dealing with our spaces, the other and ourselves.

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

Does research play any significant role in your practice? Do you dialogue with other experts when developing your projects?

PM: Yes, but on the same level of feelings and more invisible needs and sensations, even some things that can usually be taken as ‘no reasons’ to do something. Photography takes portions of reality to exist and reality is made by concrete things as well as invisible things and sometime some concrete things can bring up more invisible emotionally things and vice versa. Because photography is a visual thing in the end, my visions are usually stimulated by other media: dialogue, literature, music for example. My dialogues are often with some other photographers friends I trust a lot, some friends like anthropologists, architects, writers but also with just people and friends I feel connected with life matters, with sensibility toward the others and communication. I do that by trying to use those coordinates as a ship that, to find its route, needs to triangle its position with what surrounds it.

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

How far people, communities are included in your project? Or in what ways do you hope to give back or contribute to the broader artistic community or world at large with your work?

PM: I like to think that my photography can be seen in a quite universal way. It could represent a specific geographic place, buildings that belong to a specific latitude of the world, but I aim to give back a way of keeping the eye on things that allows critic reflections, together with poetry and the witness of a time of humanity.

Tell us about the project “Cratere” among the Winners of Urbanautica Awards 2022? What is the motivation and the theme you addressed?

PM: "Cratere" was a commissioned work. In the beginning I was feeling really worried because it seemed like everything was leading toward a sort of idea of a classic reportage about an African community and the role of Caritas into that phenomena in Crotone. As I described before I did a bit of research and tried to identify mainly places and spaces that could be of interest for me and my practice to be explored and felt. In the end, once I got to the place I just went with the flow of the encounters and of the places I visited and found. That quickly gave me several inputs and potential directions I could follow to develop different kinds of series. I wanted to show how those African people literally build and create their life, path, houses and direction toward the search of simply a new opportunity, a new life. And this way brings up a lot of reflections on how politics and the power deals with such issues, often pretending to not see certain things and problems.

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

How does this work fit in your identity as a photographer or visual artist and if relates any with your previous works?

PM: That is a very good question. I do have a strong feeling about this work, I approached it with all my energies and senses. So it is totally in my identity. It reflects who I am and mainly who I was at the time I made it. Compared to my idea regarding what makes that work recognizable as my work and compared to my previous series I have to say that it has some differences that are interesting to talk about. I had not much time to develop it so I did not want to leave any possibility out of the game. What does it mean? It means that I approached the shooting concentrating my attention to the things that usually catch my energy, but also I wanted to stay open to other aspects of the medium such as portraiture, more dynamic scenes and I considered also a style that still remains to me, one I would like to go back and develop more: I’d love to make a complete series of the self built shacks, all photographed with the same approach, framing and consistency of the light.

What are the practical difficulties you faced in its development?

PM: Well, difficulties for me are often the same things that make everything more exciting and challenging: the short amount of time, the need of being together with other people taking me in the hot places was often a problem because of the time of the day so of the light that was not always my favorite light, then shooting in medium format film with just 10 frames per film it is a practical limit that I do personally love to stay very concentrate and keep my attention and energies at the top, looking for the perfect moment to be fixed.

© Pietro Motisi from the series "Cratere"

From an editorial point of view, what choices guided you in the selection of the final portfolio?

PM: As I said before I approached the work with my usual attention to spaces and places, but I wanted this thing to find a dialogue with the portraits and the other photographs I shot as ‘new possibilities’. That choice in the end gives back a good variety of situations that creates in my opinion a dialogue able to give back a strong general image of the reality I worked on.

What relevant takeaways have you achieved from this project both with respect to the topic and your authorial practice?

PM: After the shooting in Crotone I drove 45 mins south to meet a friend who lives near Soverato and spend some days with him to recover. I cried for all this time, I was feeling sorry and full of emotions related to the sad stories and conditions many people have to experience. I was happy for those situations where some of them found a way to stay better. On the other hand I felt like I did my best as a photographer but the biggest lesson was just to be aware of keeping the feelings alway on and stay as much human as possible. I know it could sound strange, but for what I’ve seen and felt, it is not.

How would you ideally showcase this project to the public? In an exhibition, in a book, in an open debate... And in general how do you cope with advice, criticism, setbacks from the audience or experts?

PM: I think that an exhibition/installation with the original sound piece that my friend Gianluca Cangemi composed for the work would be a very good way to enjoy an immersion to the work and to what it would aim to bring as an experience of the social issues that immigrants and people that work for humanitarian organizations have to face.
From the first time I had the chance to exhibit it I recognized some weak points of my decisions so I would make it with some changes in order to improve the fruition and the strength of the message. Another interesting layout for the work would be a publication together with facts and analysis from the organization that works to protect and find out solutions for a better life of those people who change world and life and need to go back to a minimum better life condition.

© Installation view Ragusa Foto Festival 2022

© Installation view Ragusa Foto Festival 2022

© Installation view Ragusa Foto Festival 2022

The scenario in which photography is presented and discussed has changed considerably in recent years with the spread of ICT and the digital world. How do you relate to social networks and this expanded field of photography? How do you see the future of the medium evolving? And communication of one's own work.

PM: To be honest my feeling is not good, I do not like the mechanisms of social networks to spread and share the work, I do not like some of the rules that seem to be necessary to reach a bigger audience. I do prefer way more to stay concentrated on the practice, on the desire of leaving a strong message and to be a witness of my time through my visions, to the few people who feel and recognize something strong in my work.

In this fast changing environment have there been periods where you felt the need to redefine or pivot your artistic direction? Or to find your grounding again? How do you handle evolution in your life/work and transformation of visual-identity?

PM: Oh well, I’ve had many different seasons: big stops, crisis, years with a lot of inspiration and recognition, … Now I found a bit of relief with painting. I stain some pieces of expensive paper with watercolors and that makes me feel good for many reasons. One of those reasons is that I do not need reality to express feelings, but with shapes and colors I can try to give back the core of certain intentions and emotions. Of course I do love photography so I want to make more work, but it is just because before I make a living out of it, it is already a lot that photography makes me feel alive, to say it with the words of Robert Adams.

© Pietro Motisi, from "serie scura Alicudi", Watercolor #5

© Pietro Motisi, from "serie scura Alicudi", Watercolor #3

© Pietro Motisi, from "serie scura Alicudi", Watercolor #3

Any interesting books that you recommend and that recently inspired you and why?

PM: I’ve recently been exploring the work of the Sicilian writer Gesualdo Bufalino, he also had a particular attention on photography and his language brings up a lot of good visions I find interesting for my practice, for the editorial work I am doing right now and to dig more into the reality and the present of my home land.

How would you advise students embarking on their artistic journeys based on your experiences?

PM: Be true with yourself. Picture making can be a very nice experience in creating good looking images but it could be something way deeper and important for life if we make ourselves able to put in connection our inner soul with the outer world thanks to the medium.

Which photographer would you like to read an interview about in Urbanautica Journal? Why?

Sam Laughlin, because he is a friend and I believe his work is poetic and strong and it should be known. David Goldblatt because I love him and his practice and his approach to both autorial and professional work, but unfortunately he died so it would be great at least to collect a retrospective of his thoughts in photography and read them all together.

Pietro Motisi (website)