© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

Marco where did you grow up?

Marco Marzocchi (MM): There are several places to which I am very attached. A specific part of the center of my city where I lived for a dozen years, the place I felt as “home”, to which I felt bound. It was a poor area, not easy, but inhabited by people and people I would say interesting. I am very attached to that area that unfortunately has changed irremediably. There are details of people, atmospheres, places that I constantly seek but do not find again. I try to bring them back into photography but it’s very difficult because everything has changed. I miss them. I spent a lot of time on the street observing, looking, it’s a universe that has disappeared, although it is deeply rooted in me.

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

Photography. How did it start? What are your earliest memories?

MM: There’s a picture in Oyster that I think is one of the first I’ve done, the one where I talk about my father’s death. We were celebrating my ninth or tenth birthday. I am part of that grown generation flipping through the family albums and the memory of those albums is very vivid. I still have them, I like to browse them, they have strongly marked my approach. My father used to take lots of photos, I still have his own car that I use. I remember the slide projections. It has always been a means of documentation in that sense and narrative, I understood it a lot later.

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

What about digital age and "social networks". Does this have any influence on your practice ...?

MM: Social networks are simply social networks, I do not have a strong predisposition to their use. Being outside seems almost equivalent to not existing. We all have a narcissistic side, an ego that wants to be pleased, but I do not feel to define them negatively or positively, it depends on the use we make of them. Smartphones, social media have absolutely changed the way we produce and consume images. I feel the abyss between the use of a forty-five-year-old like me and a boy on his twenties. Sometimes I feel obsolete. I feel I have a very limited attitude in this. For example, the way in which I interpret copyright on images and their use is absolutely different. By now it is assumed that what is on the web is for everyone and everyone can use it to their liking. Today we can all tell our story, every moment and from anywhere with a cell phone. There are places where it is forbidden to enter with the camera and taking pictures is impossible, while any tourist with a cell phone can enter and shoot as much as they like. I would not seem naive but in this sense working in film slows me down in a good way.

Tell me about your personal work ...

MM: I think there are many types of photographers for many other types of photography and ways of doing it. In my photography consciously and unconsciously I speak of myself through portraits of people, photos of places, situations, and details. I always have a camera with me. I am looking for a daily life made of boredom, simplicity and small details, in which joy, fear, pain, etc. are manifested. I’m looking for poetry. Shooting in an instinctive or not, until I feel that the project is finished, I know when it is exhausted the urgency to do so. I happen to shoot for years; collect material and then for months and months do editing.

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

I like using films because of the unexpected, the lack of control, the chance of a mistake, and its distinctive trait. This is what I’m looking for in my practice: creating something unique, personal. And I also like the digital for its precision, everything is functional. Create contrasts, create chaos. All is inevitable. Create queries by looking for answers to other questions. I had to learn to have a discipline in this because I’m not an ordered photographer, I constantly have to impose myself to divide what is the compulsive need to produce and shoot from what is the rational editing work. For this type of project, it takes patience and time, when I have to choose a photo I always try to think about that photo in 30 years. So I print it and stick it on the wall. And wait. It is important for me to try to cultivate the wonder, to continue to be like a child who is amazed.

Your series 'Oyster' has been selected and published in the catalog of the Urbanautica Institute Awards 2019. Can you introduce us to this project that deeply involves your personal story and your family memories...

MM: The motivations of Oyster were to give shape to a very confusing period of life, marked by dramas, joys, etc. (from ‘74 to today). It’s about something that happened and yet defines me daily. The story of my family, my story. It was necessary for me to do it, and it all started with my own personal need to give answers to questions and try to have confirmations, to close a chapter and, in a sense, metabolized it. Or despite everything, accepting it. To put everything back in chronological order and make sense of madness. It’s my story and that of the important people who have been part of it, of the love that despite everything there was. No expectation or initial purpose other than to concretize and create some order within me is an introspective work, but I think it concerns themes present in each of us.

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster' 

'Oyster' brings together your photographs and archival materials, collected over a decade. When did you realize it was time to do something with it? Tell us a little about the approach and criteria you adopted in editing a vast archive.

MM: I realized at a certain point that I had to stop and put everything together, define the project. The work done at Smedsby with JH Engstrom and Margot Wallard, and later with Jim Goldberg, was very important. As well as the support of Lina Pallotta. Then, I have two dear friends who help me in the editing stages. I think that when you have to put together a work of this kind you need to turn to someone you trust, to those who have a background that can approach our language. Discuss, reflect, clash. And then take responsibility for making choices and deciding. The first editing was 600 photos, then 200 and at the end of 50. I had all the photos of the first editing hanging on the walls of the house for more than two years, it served me to be very objective and detached from the project.

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster' 

In the debate on contemporary photography, many argue that photography is dead. It seems rather paradoxical to me, and your project confirms it. What do you think about it? 

MM: It seems to me that photography is at its maximum splendor. Do you know another historical period in which so many photo books, photography festivals, competitions, etc… are produced? It seems to me that everyone can cut out their own space. I know several people who think photography is dead, and they’re the same people who argue that color can be put together with black and white; they do not realize that their concept of photography is dead. I know photographers who hate photography but continue to do it: I personally would give it to others, time is precious. Follow your instincts, your intuitions. Build your own language, the variables are so many that it is interesting to create something else. Or at least try.

© Marco Marzocchi from the series 'Oyster'

When you write about the 'Oyster' project you use an effective image, that of exorcising pain, replacing fears with sentiment, love. When you review this very intimate and personal work, and you see it as an artist how you look at yourself...

MM: I feel like I've put almost all the pieces of the puzzle together. There was an urgent need to close a circle, a period, to give it a connotation and accept everything despite the question marks and unresolved issues. These gaps, these questions that will never be answered I realized after decades that they could only be worked through immense work of acceptance and compassion. In this case a great love. I have never seen the project in artistic terms, it is a key to understanding what took place with its closure.

© Book 'Oyster', published by Void

© Book 'Oyster', published by Void

© Book 'Oyster', published by Void

The closure of the 'Oyster' project coincides with the elaboration of all that experience, I think there is a much deeper aspect behind the project, to photography in general. I consider photography to be something much more complex, I don't know if the complicated term is right, there are personal dynamics, conscious and unconscious choices that define a project that make it come alive, there are very different interpretations.

Can you mention 3 books that are important to you?

MM: Follia by Giordano Bruno Guerri; Love is a dog that comes from hell by Charles Bukowski; The Poems by Cesare Pavese.

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LINKS
Marco Marzocchi (website)
Oyster (book) by Marco Marzocchi
Urbanautica Italy