Hi Alessandra! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hi Luce, my name is Alessandra Canteri, and I'm a freelance photographer and post-producer. I'm from Verona, but I've been living and working in Milan for ten years now.
After graduating in Literature and Philosophy, I started pursuing what had always been my passion: photography. I worked as an assistant to several fashion photographers, and then, for three years, I was in a post-production studio, which allowed me to refine my photo-retouching skills, especially in the fashion industry. It's a job I really enjoy because I interact and work closely with many professionals in the field, and also because working with color stimulates me a lot. The beauty of being a freelancer is that you don't have a predefined area; you deal with all types of photography, so it goes from still life to portraits to architecture, depending on the commission.
How did you get into photography?
My photographic research is based on memory. The very act of photographing is intended as an attempt not to forget. This pursuit of memory and making it visible is closely linked to my relationship with cinema, my first passion, and more generally to the relationship with time and space, which I try to contract and expand through the use of repetition and seriality, detail and overview, microcosm and macrocosm. Hitchcock's cinema ignited this passion in me. The book resting on the table, which I always carry with me and am very fond of, is titled "Hitchcock/Truffaut" by François Truffaut. It collects a series of interviews with Hitchcock about all his films. The idea of pursuing a degree in cinematography and then focusing on still images, hence photography, I owe to him.
Is there a particular photograph you are most attached to?
I don't have one particular photograph that I'm most attached to; each one brings me back to an inner image that I've made my own and that necessarily represents me, and in this knowing and recognizing myself, I find the purpose of my research.
And what subject is the protagonist in your photos?
My favorite subjects are definitely people, particularly the female figure, whose continuity and relationship with the context she is in I enjoy exploring. I am also fascinated by objects, with which I communicate through the filter of photography and which I consider "alive," personified.
There's a lot of you in your photos...
I want to find myself in what I see, be it an object, a person, a landscape; what interests me is to give my truth to an image and say "there's something of me in there." I shoot a detail or a portion of what I see because I focus on that element that represents me. I seek my idea of beauty, which may very well not be shared by others.
Your profession isn't directly evident on your Instagram profile, why is that?
On my Instagram profile, you don't perceive my work in terms of commissions because I deliberately don't want to showcase it. I prefer to be appreciated for what I express photographically, regardless of the jobs I do. In fact, I want my eye, how I see photography, to be perceived professionally as well. The choice to express myself with a profile that isn't purely professional is precisely to convey who I truly am and to give my vision as a first impression.
Another characteristic of mine is a very basic, very simple approach to shooting, which is another element I would like to express. My shots are not constructed, not sophisticated, elaborate; everything is very immediate.
What is beauty to you?
I don't think my photos are beautiful, and I don't want them to be. I don't start from a particular study of light or framing, either in function of an idea of beauty or to make the image beautiful and harmonious. This is not my photographic intention. For me, beauty is the need to express myself and to find myself in photography. In Hitchcock's films, the figure of the woman has always been a very important source of inspiration. In my shots, I seek a very strong, independent idea of femininity, but at the same time sweet, delicate but also fierce and audacious, just as he expressed it in his cinema. This is my idea of beauty.
What do you shoot with and how?
I shoot a lot with analog cameras because I like the idea that the work isn't immediate. I like the fact that the photograph settles and that time has to pass before the photos are developed. I enjoy the surprise of seeing, later on, what I've done. I have time to reflect on it, and then seeing them again is almost like seeing them for the first time. I like to shoot with compact and fully automatic cameras, immediate ones. I have an Olympus, an SLR, and a Rolleiflex, and I always carry them with me.
Why @alessandracanterini?
The name alessandracanterini is a nickname used by some friends in a playful and affectionate way, I've never changed it because I like the idea of still feeling small in some way.
What did you dream of as a child?
As a child, I wanted to be an actress. My first love was the protagonists of Hitchcock's films; there, for the first time, I perceived women as a multitude of emotions and facets, peculiarities, and I was fascinated that they could be at once sweet, cruel, brilliant, magnetic, disarming. So my passion for cinema stems from a passion for acting, which then focused on photography, hence on lighting, framing, and the choice of movement.
What's your Life Motto?
I believe in the power of change, embracing the new and the unknown while remaining true to oneself. I also believe in lightness and irony, to be applied to all things.
What's your daily uniform?
My favorite uniform is a white t-shirt and black jeans, sometimes I dare to wear a floral dress. Practicality first and foremost. I prefer to wear a few more accessories that characterize me.
