INTERVIEW WITH MAURO CURTI
by Alice Oliver
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Mauro Curti intricately weaves together humanity, memories, and landscapes. Whilst in conversation with Sola Journal's Alice Oliver, Mauro unveils how his upbringing in a serene Alpine village laid the foundation for his artistic journey, nurturing his profound connection to nature and family.
Mauro's photographic voyage commenced with a humble digital camera, propelling him through Central and South America and kindling a passion for encapsulating fleeting instants.
His project 'Riturné' emerged from this odyssey, capturing the essence of his native province's rural life. Within this exploration of memory and belonging, Mauro adeptly employs analogue photography to infuse his work with a nostalgic colour palette. Balancing preservation and the transient nature of existence, his art gracefully navigates the realm between personal narrative and universal truths. As 'Riturné' represents his present endeavour, Mauro envisions his future delving into environmental themes, carrying forward his exploration of the interplay between humanity and the natural world.
AO: Could you tell us a little about your early life, where did you grow up, and how did that environment shape you and subsequently your practice?
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MC: I grew up in a small village, close to the Alps, in the north of Italy. During my childhood and adolescence, I spent a lot of time on my family's farm, away from kids my own age. I somehow created a personal world of adventure in a rural setting surrounded by nature, animals, and my family members. My agricultural background and love for nature have been guiding my interests and my steps as a photographer towards themes linked to the rural landscape and all forms of life related to nature, the every day and the ordinary life, without any geopolitical boundaries.
AO: Can you tell me a bit about how your photographic practice started? What were some elemental moments in your photographic education that helped or hindered the shaping of your practice?
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MC: Few photos were taken in my family and today there are not many memories of my childhood frozen in photographs, perhaps this is precisely the reason that moved me many years later (9 years ago) to buy a small digital mirrorless camera and to took a basic course in photography. I then left Italy for a research trip where I focused on the practice and the use of the photographic medium whilst travelling around Central and South America. I travelled for several years taking photos everyday. I settled in Buenos Aires in 2015 where I deepened my photographic studies by approaching film photography.
In 2018, I moved to Malaga for work. There I took an advanced photography course and started to think of photography as way to express something and to share my way of seeing and perceiving the world around me. I the returned to my hometown with a good amount of references and a few photobooks, support and a constant source of inspiration to start my project Riturné, a solitary investigation and a daily investigation around my province. Through the first part of the project I was awarded a scholarship in 2021 to do a Master Degree in Documentary Photography at the University of Arts TAI, in Madrid. This is the most recent major milestone in my photographic journey and has given me further consciousness and knowledge as well as constant help in the making of Riturné.
AO: Your project ‘Riturné’ explores the relationship between man and territory, personal conflicts, and the idea of family and belonging. What initially inspired you to embark on this project and delve into these themes?
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MC: Self-therapy, the need to try to establish a connection with my homeland, with my roots, deeply connected to the countryside, the rural world and the people who populate it, my family, the places of my childhood. A relationship that has always been difficult, love and hate, belonging and not belonging, and a lot of loneliness. I use the camera as a tool to heal, explore, understand, and accept.
AO: Riturné focuses on the province of Cuneo in the Piemonte region of Italy, where you grew up. How has your personal connection to this place influenced your photographic approach and perspective? In what ways has returning to your hometown shaped your understanding of the landscape and its people?
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MC: There is no place more intimate and more personal than the place where you were born where you have lived and spent most of your life. Places that at a certain time pushed me away and years later called me back. Returning to revisit and learn about new places in my province, the curiosity to see places again with new eyes after many years of living far away. An opportunity to connect with the province where I was born, its landscapes and its people. An investigation that allows me to understand more about the connections between man and nature, the agricultural world and its pragmatism, the work in the fields, the history and tradition of my family that has been passed down for generations. A sociological and anthropological experiment to understand and accept my origins and essence.
AO: Memory, absence, and home are key concepts explored in your project. Could you discuss how these themes manifest in your photographs and why they hold significance for you?
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MC: Self-therapy. I suffered a deep depression for many years, since early adolescence. Travelling has helped me to look for answers, to live life freely, to make decisions constantly, breaking preconstituted patterns that I tried to respect for years. Returning home and exploring places of my childhood allows me to continue to maintain a living connection with family members who are no longer there, my mother, my grandparents, and the child Mauro. Even while travelling in America, I always unconsciously tried to photograph places and locations that reminded me of my origins, my roots, and home as a refuge, as a safe and protective place. To keep the inner child alive and keep the ego under control. And to keep alive the memory and connection with one's past in order to continue to live in the present.
AO: Your work often captures rural landscapes and everyday life linked to nature, devoid of geopolitical boundaries. What draws you to these subjects, and what do you aim to convey through your portrayal of the ordinary and the natural?
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MC: The years spent in Latin America and the distance from my lifelong comfort zone has taught me to see, to observe the beautiful and interesting everyday life, everything is worthy of being photographed. And at the same time the understanding of the impermanence of things, the law of nature and its continuous transformation, the life and death. The need to maintain and preserve a living connection with a past that is becoming history. Freezing small fragments before they melt. What is gone and what sooner or later will also disappear. I’m interested in universalising a concept of living in contact with nature and rural life, defending the democratic aspect of beauty by seeking it in the ordinary life.
AO: Analogue photography plays a significant role in your practice, particularly during your time in Buenos Aires. How does working with film enhance your creative process and contribute to the visual aesthetics of your project?
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MC: From an aesthetic point of view working with film allows me to obtain a colour palette that I have not found in digital photography until now, it’s a tool that helps me emphasize themes constantly present in my work such as memory, nostalgia, melancholy, I can reproduce colours and sensations strongly present in my childhood memories. I approached the darkroom in Buenos Aires, with black and white, it allowed me to expand my control over the photographic process, forcing me to think more when composing the image, to decide what goes in and especially what remains outside the camera's viewer. Analogue photography requires certain rules and precise processes, a ritual that needs an observance of rules and precise timing that allows me to act with a rhythm more connected with nature and my essence. Living in the present, being in the moment.
AO: ‘Riturné’ is described as an attempt to maintain and preserve a living connection with a past that is becoming history. How do you navigate the tension between preserving the past and embracing impermanence in your work? How does photography serve as a means to freeze and capture fleeting moments?
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MC: Balance is a constant philosophy present in my life and in my daily photographic practice, and it is a word that I keep in mind even at the time of looking for a place and representing it photographically. places where there is a balance between a past and a present, past lives that maintain a strong connection to the present. Fragments of memory that help me preserve a memory of locations and situations from my childhood, a process of photographic archiving that documents constant change and the law of impermanence.
AO: As a documentary and portrait photographer, how do you approach the process of capturing intimate moments and personal stories within the context of ‘Riturné’? What challenges do you encounter, and how do you navigate the ethical considerations of documenting people and their lives
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MC: All the people portrayed in the Riturné project are in some way connected to the rural land and everyday life in my province. Most of them are known people, family members and friends I have known for years. The approach with a camera is consequently natural, I always have the opportunity to explain my intentions and the goal of my project. And when it comes to unknown subjects met for the first time the photograph is the result of a previous conversation and an interest in their lives, we establish a connection and a kind of sharing. In some ways these are always self-portraits, I identify with all the people photographed, there is a deep empathy, which I consider essential for the success of a good portrait. Dignity, honesty and sincerity are the keywords that guide me during the process.
AO: Your journey as a photographer has taken you on a research trip through Central and South America. How has this experience shaped your artistic vision and influenced the way you approach storytelling through photography?
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MC: The trip to Latin America represented for me the search for 'A Room of One's Own,' 'Riturné' would not have been born without those years spent away from home, on the other side of the world. I learned to observe and meet my balance through a simple and essential life, out of the context of the first world, photographing the everydayness that held my gaze: now I have an immense archive of photographs that I hope can be shared. Looking at one's birthplace from another point of view has helped me understand and wake up the soul from a long hibernation. Coming back to celebrate my homeland through photography was therefore the natural consequence.
AO: Looking ahead, are there any upcoming projects or themes you are interested in exploring through your photography? How do you envision your work evolving in the future?
MC: I am interested in and I’m working lately on themes related to the environment and climate change that involves and also my province, particularly the small mountain communities that survive by winter tourism and that in recent years have gone through a period of deep crisis due to the closure of many ski facilities. Themes and images are always poised between nature and society, connected by a presence-absence relationship, where human intervention is always, and inevitably, the transformation of the landscape around us. The mutation of the land and especially the people who populate it.
AO: Finally, please can you share with us some of your favourite photobooks or bodies of work that have influenced your practice?
MC: In recent years I have acquired a large number of new referents, photographers and works that have inspired my work. I can only mention a few, most of them classics of documentary photography: "Snow" by Sohrab Hura, "The Map and the Territory" by Luigi Ghirri, "On The Sixth Day" by Alessandra Sanguinetti, "Sleeping by the Mississippi" by Alec Soth, "Grays The Mountain Sends" by Bryan Schutmaat. I love Rob Hornstra's multi-year project “The Europeans (2019-2029)”, a portrait of modern Europe, travelling from region to region. All works that photograph the landscape, its people and their lifestyles. I recently discovered Norwegian photographer Andrea Gjestvang's book, “Atlantic Cowboy”, which explores how masculinity morphs and survives in harsh farming and fishing communities of the Faroe Islands. Beautiful.
