Stopping Time and Memory Through His PolaWorks. Interview with Visual Artist Paolo Angelucci

Paolo Angelucci, visual artist from Italy. Photo © Courtesy of the artist

Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

As a child, I was the home photographer. I had a Yashica FX-3 2000 and dreamed of having a painter’s easel; in 1999, I bought my first photographic enlarger at a flea market.

My first darkroom was in an empty office that some friends made available: I had everything I needed to print, and even a painter’s easel. In that place, I saw the image slowly appear from the bottom of the tray for the first time, under the red light, like a memory swallowed by the sea.

From that moment on, I never stopped loving photography. I began to spend the nights printing, and soon my goal became to make photography a unique work, far from mass reproducibility. In 2006, I took my first Polaroids and in 2011 I was a tester for the Impossible Project instant films.

In 2007 I photographed my breath, in 2008 I made my first black and white photographic emulsion and in 2018 I developed a personal printing technique bringing photography closer to sculpture.

What does your work aim to say?

My work is a visual journey that goes beyond appearance. Photography, for me, is a tool to evoke what is not immediately visible, to explore what lies behind the surface. I like to compare this process to crossing a mountain pass, I like to push myself beyond the boundary between the visible and the invisible.

What I want to communicate through images is the essence of time that flows within us, capturing the infinite details that often escape the everyday gaze. Details that make everything unique, learning to observe to discover beauty and uniqueness. My work is an invitation to look with new eyes, to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Where do you find inspiration for your art?

My work is born mainly from the careful observation of the context that surrounds me, from nature, and from the emotional connections that I establish with it. For example, I can decide to tell the story of the mountain where I come from, which I have always seen as a limit to reach, as in the Maiella project.

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