Learn From Experience: Francesco D’Alonzo

He was born in Pescara on 20 September 1981. He began to photograph at the beginning of the second half of the 2000s, mainly landscapes inspired by love for nature and biodiversity. Over the years 2008-2011, the collaboration with the discorsifotografici.it website has been carried out for the creation of a page devoted to travel photography and paesaggidrabruzzo.com on the enhancement of Abruzzo’s territory. He began to deepen his photography, and in these years, he attended an advanced Reportage course in Rome at Photographic Offices, winning a special photo contest “Roma in a click” always at the Roman school in the same year. The human factor, investigating urban spaces, geometries, and forms of life within them are fundamental and fundamental themes of photographic evolution. This research brings him to participate in several international exhibitions (exhibition at Blank Wall Gallery in Athens) publications on several international street and black & white photographer magazines (Corridor Elephant, Paris, Apf Magazine Street Photography), entering 2017 within the “Exhibit Around” (Urban and Human Empathy) with exhibitions around Europe. To date, his photographic research, which is expressed through b & w images, concerns the study of urban spaces and its inhabitants, ranging from street to social reportage.

What are the rules of your photographic work?

The rules of my photographic work are essentially three: curiosity, programming, research

Is there a particular combination of techniques and tools that you think makes the difference?

No, there is no particular combination of technique and tools, because we can have the best reflex camera, be technically perfect, but without a spirit of research, without our own photographic culture, the road is short.

Tell us about an experience that definitely changed the way you work and made you grow

Surely, years ago, to attend a storytelling course and live an experience in the field of about 1 year, within a reality very different from mine, sometimes even cruel, to create a photographic work.

Was there ever a difficult situation? How did you react? Tell us.

Fortunately, there were no difficult situations, but there were complicated situations, in which I certainly had to change my approach to the story I wanted to tell.

How do you relate to the environment and the subjects you portray?

certainly the environment and the people I relate to when I work on a project are the fundamental aspects to take into consideration. When I start a new job, I meet new people, I explore a new environment, normally I never take photographs at the beginning, so as not to make people uncomfortable, but above all to establish a relationship of trust with those in front of me.

I also ask you to share a bonus trick among your secret techniques

I have no secret strategies, but I can suggest a technique that I often use and that in terms of shooting is almost always very good; that is to always enter the scene of the situation that you want to photograph, and then once you feel involved, start photographing, no one will notice the presence of a photographer anymore.

Tell us about your equipment, what kind of cameras do you shoot with?

I have very light equipment, not very visible that allows me to move in a very agile way. I shoot with a fuji X-T3 and with fixed lenses, 23mm and 50mm

How do you relate to your customers? Do you choose them or do you let chance bring them to you?

It depends a little on what the work I carry out is. If it’s a long-term project, I usually choose them, knowing what story I want to tell. On the contrary, for more commercial jobs, it is the future clients who choose me

Do you think there is a perfect age to start being a photographer?

I think not, I think each of us finds his own way and perhaps a beginning with a specific date does not exist

What have been the consequences of COVID19 in your work?

Certainly due to the Covid-19 pandemic my work has suffered a great slowdown, works, ideas, projects, exhibitions, books, which I was carrying out and which saw 2020 as a year of realization have been interrupted.

Are there any books you would recommend?

Above all, I recommend these 4 books which for me have been and are still fundamental today:

“Other Americas” by Sebastiao Salgado, “Istanbul city of a hundred names” by Alex Webb,

“Gypsies” by Josef Koudelka, “Memoria” by James Nachtwey