FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER ARIANNA GENGHINI
ARIANNA GENGHINI IS A FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER LIVING AND WORKING IN MILAN, ITALY.
I was born in the Como area and my connection with the Northern Italy lake area is deep; it combines my love for water and for mountains. I also have Southern origins, which can be traced in my warmth and passionate way of living.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
My greatest inspirations are literature, cinema, arts and fashion itself.
My favorite writers are Herman Esse and Milan Kundera, they can speak so well about the human condition in the most delicate and romantic way.
My favorite directors so far are Truffault and Ingmar Bergman, they always get me daydreaming.
In terms of fashion, I love Prada and I’m truly passionate about sculpture and Impressionism.
I find great energy and influence also by living in contact with nature, which makes me free and open minded. But truly what inspires me the most is knowing new places and people: traveling and moving forward, leaving and coming back, seeing different skies and landscapes, visiting cities and getting in touch with other cultures and cultural backgrounds.
Tell us a bit about your creative process?
My creative process starts always with a vision, a cinematic sort. I think about how I would like to represent the scene or the character and then I do research through images archives, films and photo-books to create moodboards, which has always been one of my favorite parts of the creative process. After this, it takes some weeks of arrangements and then I shoot in a very little time. I’m really quick, sometimes I get the best shot within the first 10 photos. It’s always funny to see how much thinking, and researching for creating an image that can take just 1 second to shoot.
On set I get in touch with every collaborator and try to talk and know as much as possible of them and the models. This year I am excited to be realizing my first exhibition (Ferrara Photo Festival in September) and a new fashion film.
How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the world changing moving forward?
Last year changed me as a person and as an artist: while doing lots of personal and inward research, I found my true self and got to know better my way of thinking and self-expressing with images and emotions. This led me to a re- valuation of photography’s power of speaking for me. I did some research on how to combine my soul and inward oneiric world with my photography and it came out that I started directing and writing a corto and a couple of fashion films.
What I noticed is that everyone tried to get more creative in problem-solving: shooting remotely through video-calls for example was one of the most popular way of maintaining a sort of normality during lockdowns. Now we know that everything’s possible: you can create beautiful images with any kind of technology and equipment. Photography and Movie-making are very democratic arts from this perspective.
Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?
Zendaya, I love her style, and she is both a talented singer and actress, as well as a beautiful and inspirational woman. It would be a dream to shoot her.
Do you think the art world needs to change, and if so how do you feel it can improve?
I think that the art world needs to focus more on content under the surface, rather than struggling so much to create perfection and beauty. Aesthetic means more than beauty only: it talks also about ideas meanings and connections within the images. Photos, artworks and movies are beautiful and aesthetic because they can mean so much for our lives, they could truly inspire people to do better for themselves and the others.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
Eating lunch based on vegetables and goat cheese with my family and friends in a flourishing and flowered garden under the June sun. Laughing, cooking together and sharing food, telling stories, sunbathing, spending time together. My happiest memories are all linked to eating food together with my family during festivities and birthday parties. We have really strong family traditions and to us sharing food is like sharing love, cooking and eating food is like an act of joy and love.
2DM Management
