In partnership with La Dolce Vita Workshops, I created traveling workshops in Italy.

The workshops are designed for any level of expertise and will teach you to live everyday La Dolce Vita and bring it in your photographs.

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Italy is not just a place, it’s a lifestyle that created the most beautiful art and design. It’s a lifestyle you can live everywhere after you had experienced it in the proper way.

You can check the details of the workshops on www.ladolcevitaworkshops.com

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Book before Christmas 2023 and receive $500 discount.

Hurry up, only ten rooms available and usually fill up quickly!

A news in Italy was able to stay on the first page, even in front of Covid.

Here my photographic answer! For the details watch the video, this time is very short and nudity is involved.

Please note the irony, to pass a freedom message I had to censor the nipples in this video cover and thumbnail so social media will not censor my post. At least, here on this page I’m still free to show the beauty of the nude human body!

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Until the next one… listen to Rodney Carrington hymn to freedom

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Yes, I did it, I wrote a novel.

Lasting Photographs

In the past years I had the time to immerse myself in my family archive and I had a confirmation of the importance of photographs and the stories around the images.

Real printed images that I was able to see with just my eyes and a simple source of light.

But sometime we find images and there is nobody around to tell their stories. Sometime is just too late in time, and sometime the image traveled far away from the people who knows the story.

On the antique markets we often find old photographs, most of the time of people we don’t know, and we will never know who they were and how was their life.

All this made me think about the importance of photographs and their stories. Specially now that almost all the photographs are just bits of data in some hard disk and not visible without instruments.

This novel is to show what kind of meaning and stories a picture can reveal. A story that set in two continents and 80 years.

The novel was edited by Whitney Brown, and she did a great job to smooth my italenglish, so don’t worry!

It is available on Amazon worldwide. Enjoy it.

I had been a member of the PPA, Professional Photographers of America,  since 2000.

I think PPA is a great association with a lot of benefit and educational resources for the members.

Every year the PPA organizes the International Photo Contest. Sending the images, seeing them judged live online and looking at the others is a great way to improve. I sent images in the years, as is normal, some got merits, some got in the prestigious Loan Collection and some was not even considered.

I always found a nice challenge to have my vision, more European, compared with the typical American vision of the judges. It’s a nice way to get out of the comfort zone. I always suggest to European to confront with the USA vision and vice versa.

In the last couple of years I noticed a trend in the IPC that I do not like and this year, with the Grand Imaging Award Finalists, I was absolutely disappointed (kind of pissed is more appropriate lol).

You can check the selected images (I choose to use the word images instead of photographs) and form your own opinion. My opinion is very simple, almost all the images are more digital paintings that photographs.
Some of them are beautiful, but are a beautiful digital paintings and not photographs.

Photography is in a deep philosophical crisis, basically right now, a 4 years old kid with some luck can create a great photograph with his phone. Obviously photographers are looking for a way to distinguish themselves and they are falling back in the Pictorialism tradition instead to bring the pure photography to its greatness.

I look at the pictures and I can see very few of them that could had be done with a film. Don’t get me wrong I like the fact that photographs can be digitally improved, but when i see brush strokes, skin that looks like wax and images looking more like a drawn illustration, I really think is too much.

I watched the judges live, I followed the room where my photographs were going to be judged. In that room I recognized the voice of Tim Walden (one of my favorite photographers, I love his B&W portraits) and other people I did not recognized. There were two women, one of them was an absolute Photoshop taliban, every over retouched image was her choice,  she challenged all the over retouched images that didn’t got a merit. In the few hours I followed she repeated an infinite number of times “It’s beautiful, it looks like a painting!”. I screamed at my mac monitor more than once!!!

Until few years ago was normal to joke about the phrase “It looks like a painting” considering it the opposite of a good photograph. Between photographers, here in my north Italian region, we were use to repeat in slang with the old lady piemontese accent “It is really beautiful, it looks like a painting” to make fun of people don’t getting the meaning of photography.

During the same time I have seen passing by a lot of very nice non retouched beautiful pictures, some very classic portraits in black and white, not getting merits. Except for Tim Walden, who sometime called a challenge to defend them, I did not hear any other judge talk about the quality of classic and traditional photography.

I’m sorry but I really do not consider photographs most of the finalists, I consider them beautiful digital paintings or illustrations based on a photograph but not photographs.

At this point I consider much more a photographer the Canaletto, an Italian painters born in Venice in 1697. He used a camera obscura to project the image on a ground glass and reproduce it perfectly to transfer the reality on the canvas.
Will be a Canaletto paintings accepted at the IPC?

The problem of the crisis of photography goes deeper.We have seen many examples in the last years. A third of the images rejected from photojournalism awards because too much photoshopped, in 2016 a big discussion for the Australian photo contest were the winning images were more illustrations than photographs,

Photos by Lisa Saad/APPA

Photos by Lisa Saad/APPA

to arrive at this year Olive Cotton Award for photographic portraiture where the winning images was created with the grandmother of the artist spitting and scratching a film.

©Justine Varga – Olive Cotton Award 2017

I really think is time we redefine what photography is. I have no problem to see a section of the contests for digital manipulations, but I really have problems to see brush stroke in Photoshop in a landscape or animals category.

There is a trend to eliminate the sense of reality form photography, personally I think is a combination of interests. Politically the reality is always a problem, photographically is easier to sell a filter (thanks God Nik’s filters are no more supported by Google!) that creates an effect than to tech how to be creative, software and camera manufacturers have the interest to let you use more and more software, the firsts to make more money and the seconds to hide the lack of quality of their hardware. Another big interest is coming from the photography associations, their events main sponsors are usually software companies and is easy to attract people at the workshops teaching a magic trick that telling them there is a need of sweat and blood to learn how to become better.

The contests that required a limited post production had cut the participants at least in half. It’s not good for business.

The big problem is that we see more and more fake images, all looking the same, all with the same filters applied and less creativity behind the lens.
FaceBook is proposing to me, every single day, the magic software that will change the sky of the images “now also with a selection of rainbows” to transform a grey flat day in a magical sky. Really? Is that photography?

I do not like this trend and I hope the photographers community will be able to redefine photography, perhaps dividing it in currents like we do with paintings, to give again importance to what is “written with the light” and not to what is designed with the pixels.

BTW, this year I got one merit for the photograph you can see below and 3 images not considered, one of them was finalist at the One Eyeland Photo Award

My first impact was to not consider the performance as something positive, but then I started to read the comments, all similar, just to quote some of them

“What happened to this world? Seriously.”
“What? She needs psychological help”
“A singularly perverted narcissist and exhibitionist. Gets her thrills this way. Proves no point!”
“She likes it?”
“A true media whore. People are morons…those people touching her are pigs.”
“Mediawhore”

and so on… you can imagine how it went on.

So I used Google to fine Milo Moire` page and read the explication of her performances and watched the others.

After the comments and after seeing the other performances I have to say I really like her and she made a perfect point. Particularly I liked the Protest over the Cologne attack. In a culture where the answer of Cologne Mayor was to suggest the women to cover themselves I though that this performance was perfect.

I’m a photographer, mostly a commercial photographer, but in the last years I started to take picture of nudes. It was my way to clear my mind from the clients needs and from my usual subjects. I liked it.

I had some nudes on the walls in my studio, most of them with just part of the female bodies without the face, like you see it here. Most of the models were non professional and did it to have a memory of their beauty for the future.

At least half of the males entering my studio started to ask information about the model, who was, how to contact her, presuming that if she posed naked she was a whore. That was absolutely disturbing for me.

We are in a society where the average age to loose the virginity is 13 years, sex is promoted everywhere in its most distorted and fetish ways, we have discussions about gender identity in the elementary schools, gay prides in every city and so on but a simple clean beautiful nude is not accepted. A nude woman is a whore for many man.

We arrived at absurdities like accusing raped women to have provoked the muslims in Cologne because they were not covered as they were wearing a burqa!
Milo Moire` is not only making a great point but she is making it for all us photographer that shoot nudes and respect the models, respect their boundaries and respect the fact that they can be naked females and still be women, clean, have a strong moral sense and not be merely whores.

The moralism is the recent years is become crazy, let me give you an example.

We all know the famous photograph of a naked little girl escaping from napalm in Vietnam by Kim Phuc. This image was banned form Facebook because it portrayed a naked girl. In the meantime it’s full of girls promoting erotic shows in provocative positions but not banned because they have a cross tape on the nipples.

Watching movies we usually see some sex scenes where we can see or imagine every kind of sexual act but in the morning the girl wake up, take the sheets to cover her to walk to the bathroom. How absurd is that? No one has problem to explain to a kid why a person was naked going to take a shower, but try to explain why the actors had their heads between each other legs! And imagine the other person remained in bed naked without the sheets! It can be a real cause for divorce!!!

I usually watch movies on the Swiss television, Switzerland is an open minded country, with a strong moral but without moralism. Most of the movies are transmitted complete without censorship and, surprise, people is nude in the shower! A simple documentary about breast cancer prevention shows a breast, we are now used to crazy nipple censorship or flower vases in absurd locations just to cover. Did you really ever seen a flower vase in a breast screening medical room?

This is another great video that makes fun of the nipple pixelation syndrome

I look at the american trend of boudoir photography and sometime I laugh, the main goal of boudoir is to portray the subject in an erotic way, but if a nipple sleeps out people screams scared. There are some photographers that put the models in positions and with an illuminations and lingerie that seems perfect for a third class porn movie, but never a nipple out, or the world will collapse!

All this come from the idea that a naked body “provoke” and provocation justify a non civil action, even a rape! This is crazy, it is wrong and is damaging photographers all around the world and most of all the safety of women, as we have seen in Cologne.

Last year on youtube appeared a video called “The photographer”, about a photographer harassing a model. I found this so offensive for photographers and so wrong. What is the most wrong part in this? The model never said a simple “no” to any request!

Also, to imply that photographers and the studio environment are like that is exactly as to imply that models are whores. It is wrong on all levels and absolutely offensive!

The mirror performance by Milo Moire` is exactly the idea to put a limit. In her performance all is brought to an excess but also on the daily life of a person limits are essential, must be openly declared and most of all must be respected. And must be used and promoted as a moral code of conduct.
Milo’s performance is exactly the idea of a limit, to put boundaries even in an excessive situation where she asks strangers to touch her genital, but inside her rules.
A model that never says “no” to requests she does not like is guilty exactly as the horny photographer. A simple “no” was the solution for the situation portrayed in the video.

But we are so deep immersed in the idea that nude is provoking and provocation equals guilt that many people do not even understand the message of Milo Moire`, they refuse to accept it and the funniest thing is that mostly women do not accept the message.

To get back to photography one of my usual example is Jock Sturges, you can see some his images here. Sturges was accused by many people, some considered it pornography, other even asked to destroy his work.
I look at his pictures and I really thinks the the people with great sexual problems are the people seeing something pornographic or erotic in pictures that have nothing to do with sexuality and are just beautiful portraits with nudist people of all ages without an erotic side.
What really impresses me is that the photographer, or the subjects are condemned and labeled by the society and nobody is spending time to say that the immoral attitude is to perceive the pictures as arousing. We need to morally destroy the idea of perversions like pedophily and morally destroy the perverts, not censorship the nudity and become paranoid. I have the pictures of my father, born in 1926 and was the norm to have pictures naked of the kids, nobody ever seen in that something in any way connected with sexuality. Now is no more, and we condemn the pictures instead of condemning the perverts.

In the same way we ask to women in Europe to cover to not be raped instead to openly and with strong verbal violence condemn and accuse the rapists!

To conclude I like Milo Moire` because I read the comments of people accusing her to be a whore for her performances, I like her because is one of the few voices evidencing the absurdity to accuse the “provokers” instead of the rapists and most of all, I like her because she is fighting for all the people and photographer, like me that see nothing immoral or wrong about nudity in itself.

I add that when I was young I learned a great lesson by a photographer working for magazines as Penthouse. I met him during a viewcamera workshop in Shaffausen at Sinar, as a young photographer I asked him how he managed the arousement having to deal with all the sexy models photographing them in poses meant to arouse the readers. I was supposing he was telling me that you get kind of insensible to the subject, but he actually told me something more important that I used in all my life: “Contrary to what women jokes about, if the blood goes in your penis does not means it goes out of your brain, you can still think and be a gentleman, we are not animals, we have a brain and there resides the power, not between your legs!”

So, we are not animals…

Let’s now have fun and see the comments destroying me for this article