Artist of the Month
When I take a portrait photograph I try to add my own personal touch to the individual character of the sitter in order to create an original work of art. I try to express my own personality through the uniqueness of my subjects. Enhancing what I find original in them is part of what makes me who I am. Thus, each photograph is a personal revelation, a fragment of my own identity.
The selection of my subjects is a process in itself because most of them are people that I barely know, whom I have just met. I am not interested in their appearance, but rather their attitude. It is how they project themselves that sparks my initial curiosity, but once they are in front of my camera my intuition takes control. Many of my subjects are strong-willed women. Not cheaply aggressive or pornographic, but endowed with pride, inner strength and a sense of self worth. They are often portrayed naked because clothes can distract the spectator from the individual's humanity. Clothes can too often tie the viewer to a specific context, time and culture. The human body itself goes beyond all that.
By way of contrast I also take many photographs of people in their everyday milieu, of adults and children engaged in ordinary, daily activities: chores, play, simply moving from place to place or enjoying one another's company, giving voice to the whole range of human emotions. I find that children in particular have an unselfconscious naturalness to them which adults find hard to display. This compliments my other work by allowing me to show how people express themselves in a more normal environment; when I return to nudes or portraiture it gives me a fresh impetus to try to reveal part of my subject's and my own personality, which the outside world does not allow us to do most of the time.
Every photograph I take and print is a self-portrait. This may seem contradictory, but the most personal and intimate traits of my subjects become part of me in the artistic process. There is a profound, universal quality that unites any thoughts and feelings we have, transcending our own individuality. This is present in my photographs as something more than a mere snapshot: Each one is an aesthetic expression of both our personalities intertwined in light and shade, captured in a single image.
www.eleonoraghioldi.com
Clockwise from top left: Ann, Untitled, 92 Years Old, 90 Years Old.