Cinema & Editorial Photography
Cinema & Editorial
Still photography on a film set is not documentation. It's interpretation of something that can't be revisited. The visual language I developed on sets runs through everything else I do — including food and brand work. Cinema teaches you, above all, to find the moments that tell a story.
The first thing working on film sets taught me is that still photography belongs to an impossible time: you're present while something happens, but what you produce has to hold its own once that moment is over.
Training
On film sets
I came to set photography through Fabio Lovino (Contrasto), one of the most important still photographers in Italy. That was a precise school: learning to move through complex environments without disrupting the set, developing an attentiveness to the moment that can't wait for a retake, building a recognizable visual language that holds its own without overwhelming the subject. Over time that way of working became part of how I think about photography in every context, not only on a set.
On set
From The White Lotus to Immaculate
I've worked on HBO productions including The White Lotus, Netflix projects including Immaculate, RAI series, and productions with Groenlandia and Lucky Red. A film set is a strange place to be as a photographer: you're always at the margins of something that isn't yours, and what you produce has to be faithful to the atmosphere of the film while standing on its own as an image. When it works, set photographs become objects with their own life, separate from the promotional campaign and the film's distribution.
The kind of attention you develop working in these conditions — the capacity to find the moment in an uncontrolled environment — carries into everything else. It's visible in food photographs, in brand projects, in editorial portraits.
Editorial and publications
Portrait work and international press
Alongside set work I've developed an editorial portrait practice. I've published in The Guardian, Variety, Vanity Fair, GQ, and The Hollywood Reporter. Editorial portraiture is a different discipline from commercial work: it demands speed, an ability to work in unpredictable conditions, and, above all, the capacity to build something genuine with whoever you're photographing, even in a very short window of time.
Cinematic language gives you tools that, to my mind, shape photographic work at a visceral level: a particular attention to available light, to the depth of space, to the moment when a person stops performing for the camera and simply exists in front of it.
If you're working on a production or looking for an editorial photographer with a cinematic background, get in touch. We can talk through how we might work together.
Get in touch