About The Exhibition

Last year, during the hot Italian summer, I travelled between city and coast taking in Naples, Florence, Rome, Venice and the Amalfi Coast over a period of 2 weeks. From the moment I arrived I was hooked on all things ‘Italy’ and found my camera was never far from my hands.

This exhibition encapsulates and documents so candidly my first experience of the Italian culture and all it has to offer – from beautiful landscapes to the sunlight reflecting from a piece of fruit; to the casual smoking of a cigarette in a doorway to the deep wrinkles torched by a lifetime of sunshine; from the cars, the 80s, the newspapers and people
to the thousand words that lay behind their eyes; to ‘Tutto Passa’ tattooed across a chest, a quote that many Italians live by meaning ‘Everything Passes’.

What struck me the most was the light. Within this series I have sought to capture the ever-present golden tones saturating everything with warmth – that and the very many connections that I was able to build with the locals along the way. Taking a photograph was a perfect excuse to start a conversation and do something else I love - chat to people! Despite the language barrier I found ways to connect with them by showing them my camera and asking to take their picture. Almost all of them obliged, many of them amazed that they could possibly be the most interesting thing to me in that moment.

My hope is that these images convey how many parts of Italy feel untouched by the modern world. Capturing the Italian way of life – from generations to traditions - this series is about local people doing the simple things in life. My strongest images come from those days where there was no itinerary, nowhere to be just following my eye and my heart. A sense of freedom to my photography followed, nothing was planned, just fleeting moments mirrored in a lens yet captured forever.

These images are about how special this culture and country are.