Alessandro Corrao is an emerging analog photographer from Italy who turns his lens toward concepts such as ‘slow life’ and simplicity, with a keen eye for portraiture, framing, and editorial shots.
In his portfolio, one can discover an array of series focused on the juxtaposition of femininity against both natural and urban landscapes. The presented series, shot on Minolta AF-DL-Ilford FP4 Plus 125, explores “bourgeois boredom.”
Corrao bypasses the search for hidden meanings, dropping the veil to display candid visuals that are strikingly honest. He mentions that there is no concrete “higher significance” and that, sometimes, photography’s purest purpose is to capture exactly what is in front of you. This is not a cynical view, but a straightforward one.
He says, “What we once called ‘bourgeois boredom’ is now just an existential boredom, made of unanswered questions, eroticism, and experimentations without a precise objective.” Highlighting the term ‘boredom,’ he goes on to say that “maybe shooting in analog is a symptom of endless boredom” itself.
Exploration for the sake of an experiment itself is a very prominent element of Corrao’s portfolio. He embraces the sentiment that art does not have to serve a purpose; quite the opposite, it can be as far from utilitarian as possible.
The portraiture that the artist creates is filled with weary playfulness and vapid seduction. Corrao seems to comment on the general lethargy of youth that inherited the world in the state of devastation, less than 2 minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, just to be called the ‘Last Generation.’
The reality of connections built on visual-based media, with attention spans shattered by never-ending notifications and digitalization of every possible asset, appears very distant from nostalgia. Yet, Corrao manages to portrait the nostalgia and longing for life with the luxury of carelessness and well-deserved boredom.
Read our “Aberration” issue in full
The 31 artists featured in RAWGUE. Magazine’s 5th issue stray from the expected, taking untrodden paths, contemplating imperfection, solitude in its many forms, and the ongoing process of self-acceptance. Through shifting perspectives, their works explore what it means to look at oneself from the outside, as if through broken glass.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
