Satellite Voices

Rome

Guido Gazzilli

May 27, 2011

Entering into the void with the award winning photographer

• Text by Satellite Voices

Guest Feature by Riccardo Lionello

Guido Gazzilli was born in 1983 in Rome where he currently lives and works. He graduated from IED in 2006 and started traveling through Europe. During this time, he concentrated on documentary style photography stories focusing mainly on social issues. In 2010, he was awarded the first prize at the Fotoleggendo Festival 2010. His photos are a kick in the eye. They contain the same sweetness of the gloomy gaze of a sad Nosferatu.

Satellite Voices: Two truths and a lie about you
Guido Gazzilli: I’m a good chef, a shy person and an easy guy.

SV: Tell me about your habit of writing detailed captions for your series of photos, and how important it is to explain your journey and the political circumstances of the place you visit.
Guido Gazzilli: The captions are the support that the photographers offer to those people that look at our work and to explain what we are talking about in that moment, and this is fundamental in photoreportage. Sometimes I like to describe the single image with only one word that allows the viewer a free interpretation.

SV: You do a lot of portrait photography, as in the series "Miss Trans Italia", and your subjects seem so relaxed. What is your way of taking a portrait?
Guido Gazzilli: Everyone has the personal approach to things. My photographs are natural, without a great construction behind them. I believe that the most important thing is creating a relationship with my subjects. I love the spontaneity that some pictures have.

SV: How much pre-thinking do you usually do before starting a process to make a picture?
Guido Gazzilli: I continually think about producing stories, and this makes me work not so much on the single image but on a project and very often I have already imagined the photos in my mind beforehand. It's an unconscious mechanism for me.

SV: Tell us a defining moment in your career. 
Guido Gazzilli: I am still waiting for it. In this moment of my career. I'm collecting some results in my work that are stimulating me to follow my way.

SV: Who should you interview next?
Guido Gazzilli: People like you.