Roberto Polillo

Born in Milano in 1946, I live in Milano and Rome. I started making photographs in the Sixties, when, for a dozen years, I took photographs in over a hundred jazz concerts. Being the son of Arrigo Polillo, a well known jazz critic, historian and concert organizer, I had the unique opportunity of building a fairly complete gallery of the most important jazz musicians of the time. These images are well known, and have been shown in many personal exhibitions, books, magazines, CDs and blogs. My photographic book “Swing, Bop & Free" (2006, Marco Polillo Editore), collects over 100 portraits of the most important jazz masters of the Sixties.

I have always been an appassionate traveller, and I actively came back to photography in the last dozen years, with a large personal research in fineart travel photography.

My goal is to represent the atmosphere of the places which I visit and that fascinate me, the particular "genius loci" that makes them unique. To this aim, the images are captured with long exposure times while moving the camera (ICM – Intentional Camera Movement technique). The subsequent digital editing does not change the image, but only emphasizes its colors and contrast. The final result shows the "magics" of the places, making visible aspects that are already present in the photographed reality, but, so to speak, in a latent form. The resulting images are often fascinating, completely different from traditional travel photography.

Most of my images are inkjet printed on fineart textured paper or finer canvas, to give them a very "pictorial" feeling.