Uncategorized – davide rizzo photography

First things first…what do I usually shoot?

It should not be a surprise that Ilford takes the lead. There are many reasons for that: this company has a true longlasting love for the film community and has managed to keep its offering quite consistent and with a reasinable price given the high standards. At the very beginning I used to pick HP5+ as a cheap option to its main alternative TriX but with time I came to realise how perfect this film is in many ways. Very versatile, you can pull it at 200 or push it at 3200 iso, develop it in XTOL or Rodinal…the results are always fantastic. It is true that it might not have the most beautiful look but there is a reason why when I have to choose, one time out of three I pick it up.

The second most used option is another Ilford film, Delta 400. Technically speaking it is far superior to the Plus series (Tabular grain vs Cubic grain) and in some cases it really shines. The look is not too cynical (as you might get with Tmax400) and the contrast is fantastic when pushed at 800 iso.

When you don’t see in the graph is why I did not shoot more of some other options…I would love to go back and use TriX (there is indeed something magic) as well as Fuji Acros 100 (in terms of beauty of tones and grain I believe the best of them all), but I can’t justify paying 2x or 3x the price of other brands. You might be fooled by the numbers of Tmax400…most of those rolls are in 35mm where I simply believe there is nothing as good as that film.

The moment all techies have been waiting for: the cameras

It is true that the photo is made by the photographer…and the look is made by the film…yet I believe the tool used is important as well. Not necessarily on the final quality, as even though there are differences between the glass of a Zeiss glass for 6×6 and a Nikkor for 35mm, this is less important than you might think. On the other hand I realise that I take different pictures with different cameras, hence the choice is not completely useless.

Again no surprise here, Hasselblad V-series cameras are the ones I would choose should I have to go to a desert island. I started with the 500CM and eventually moved to a 501CM to leverage the Acute Matte screen and better focus (I’m indeed getting older). The sound of a rewind crank is one of the sexiest sound you can hear and composing on the ground glass is pure joy (although there are better options like the screen of a Mamiya RZ67).

Recently I’ve been enjoying also the 6×7 format, especially for portrait and with vertical orientation. The Pentax 67 is not a fantastic camera but its 105mm f2.4 is probably the best lens out there. Too bad it is quite complicated to focus perfectly (that’s why the Mamiya RZ67 is reducing the gap quite quickly), I still love the combo.

In 35mm the FM2n is a pure joy to use, and while the results are often not as good as I expect (I know, being used to medium format my standards are quite high) I tend to use it quite frequently especially when traveling.

How to cook all these?

I admit I did not experiment that much when it comes to developers choice. I started with Ilford DD-X but while it was really great, I quickly abandoned it given the high price per roll. I tend to use XTOL (roughly 50% of the time) and D76 (roughly 25% of the time) almost exclusively: the first is without any doubt the best overall developer as it is cheap, extremely easy to mix, quite environment-friendly and gives excellent results with all films (expect Bergger Pancro 400 where don’t know why but D76 is way better). When I’m in the mood, I also enjoy Rodinal, especially in stand development.

Probably not the best “cru” (as the French would say) but still a dream coming true for all the photography lovers out there, Paris Photo is a massive fair during November (a month already incredibly rich for those living in Paris, with Fotofever, Salon de la Photo, Saint Germain Photo Festival and tons of other initiatives around the city) that fills the huge Grand Palais with incredible works from the past and the present.

The number of things do see is so high that I still don’t understand why the exhibition opens at midday, leaving only 6 hours to go through the immense space and browsing through the masters of photography as well as new joiners and lesser knows artists. Not to mention the artists’ talks (what a joy to hear from that crazy character that is Bruce Gilden!) and the publishers boots (which call your attention – and your wallet’s content – with their new books and signing sessions).

Of course it would be impossible to do a comprehensive recap of what I have seen, so I will focus on things that I particularly loved this year (in no specific order).

Flor Garduño is a Mexican photographer I discovered a couple of years ago, one of those hidden master who are known only to few experts, despite her incredible work, especially on nudes. I was impressed by a picture of a man fishing a big fish (one of those living in the abyss) and sitting on a rock. I can’t find the same image on Internet unfortunately.

Iromi Tsuchida, an old school Japanese photographer, had some very nice prints in BW, especially of large groups of men sitting on open air benches. This made me think that I should start considering more Japan photography as every time I stumble upon it I am quite impressed.

Who said that you can’t cheat? This is what Gilbert Garcin must have thought when he started playing with photography, way before Photoshop was out there. These pictures are not what I am more interested into but at the same time it is a pleasure to look at the fantasy of artists like him.

With the reprint of one of his most beautiful series on Serra Pelada, Sebastião Salgado is probably the superstar of photography these days. I don’t particularly like his recent images but the older ones are incredibly powerful, especially those depicting the gold mine workers in Brasil. The prints are out of this world when it comes to quality, probably the most beautiful I’ve seen this year (together with those from Ansel Adams).

Not far from Salgado I felt in love with a pure masterpiece from René Groebli, a Swiss photographer which I think I’ve seen also in the Leica book Eyes Wide Open. The soft look reminds me of latter pictures from Saul Leiter but this is more melancholic and beautiful on its own.

Entering Joel-Peter Witkin, the bad boy of American photography. I must confess I am not always at ease when I see his pictures (dead and dismembered bodies, hermaphrodite show-offs – most of the time in religious contexts…) but some are quite extraordinary. I have found two ordinary portraits which are stunning, alongside more classic images from his portfolio, printed quite big and with a nice lighting presentation. Each print now starts at 20k€…and the more blasphemous the content, the higher the price.

The Hamiltons gallery has been, as always, the most elegant of them all. Not only they present a short selection of images (which is good to focus on them), but they also build such a diffuse, low-light environment which immediately put you in connection with the frames in front of you. Richard Avedon is always there with some fantastic prints (this year it was all about the Apollo mission astronauts (John Glenn below) in medium format 6×6 prints. Ant then two hyper-powerful prints from Helmut Newton from the series in Ramatuelle.

Until this day I don’t know how I was not aware of Steve Schapiro‘s work. There was quite a number of incredible prints at Camera Work boot and the glow from those rich black and white pictures was very appealing to me. In particular a portrait of Samuel Beckett was on display and I think I’ve spent at least 5 minutes going up and down his face, delighted at the power of that picture (the digital version below does not give justice to the beauty of the print).

When I though I had seen the best that you can think of in terms of printing quality, I saw some original prints from the legend…Ansel Adams. I must confess I am not a huge fan of his pictures but that does not change the fact that you cannot stand in front of his work and not realise why it is considered the highest technician of them all (with W. Eugene Smith probably). You have the impression you can touch those rocks, that grass, those trees…and that moon looking down at you above the mountains.

I must confess I prefer BW photography, but there are some exceptions and Fred Herzog‘s work is one of my favourite artist in this category. The vibrancy of his prints is astonishing, as well as his compositions.

Among the other artists that impressed me, I noted down Tom Arndt (Man behind a store windows, 1990), Yan Morvan (the series Bobby Sands on the Belfast riots and Blausons Noirs), a fantastic pring from Deborah Turbeville (from the Valentino collection, 1977), Louise Dahl-Wolfe (pictures taken in Tusinia in 1950), Christian Tagliavini and his hyper realistic color portraits, Nelli Palomäki (and his intimate portraits), Bastiaan Woudt.

Lastly, while browsing a photography mazagine, I noted down some other photographers to be checked afterwards…Stephan Vanfleteren, Jitske Schols, Lotte Ekkel and Paul Blanca.

Hope this little recap will give you some ideas to discover old (and new) artists out there.

davide rizzo photography

Category: Uncategorized

A thousand rolls after…

First things first…what do I usually shoot?

The moment all techies have been waiting for: the cameras

How to cook all these?

Final thoughts

Paris Photo 2019