A recurring Swiss artist, Elisabetta Spinelli, returns to the pages of our magazine with a new series of her signature analog, black-and-white photographs.
This time she focuses on leisure and travel-related spaces, emphasizing their temporary nature through a minimalistic approach.
Striking shadowplay and vastness of spaces, devoid of color and crowds, combined with geometrical, linear framing, bring a cinematographic quality to the frames. The photographs are peaceful but cold, juxtaposing concrete infrastructure necessary to reach and reconnect with soft, embracing nature. They seem to point at the degree of human detachment from nature, as we are not able to enjoy it organically, being kept apart by cities, train tracks, hotel pools, and fences.
Spinelli’s new photographs look as if, were one to add subtitles over them, they would be stills from black-and-white films. This is not by chance. The artist’s passion and profession both revolve around cinema and its silver-screen realm. “I’m constantly immersed in cinematic imagery—both for work and for pleasure,” she explains. “I often find myself questioning how deeply this experience shapes my photographic gaze: my sense of composition, format, the presence and involvement of subjects within the frame, and the persistent urge to create or recreate a certain atmosphere.”
The quiet symmetry, clean-cut framing, powerfully complex composition, and a hint of distinct style generated by the artist’s ambitious vision are elements that Spinelli’s keen eye for film, subtle grain, and muted midtones tie beautifully together. A self-labeled Leica lover, the artist displays a preference for monochrome and minimalism while still maintaining an objective approach to street photography.
In the end, she reflects on the cinematic quality of her work: “It is an intimate, ongoing reflection that I return to frequently, and one to which I cannot give a definitive answer—except perhaps on an abstract, intuitive level.”
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
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.
