JACOPO PAGLIONE

“Each work about someone’s story is an opportunity for me to connect and to see other point of views. One person’s private world has the ability to transform in a collective experience.” – interview with Italian photographer, Jacopo Paglione.

Could we start with some background information about you? Where you grow up, where you based, how did you get interested in photography?
I was born in a really small town in Abruzzo, Italy. A typical mountain town full of nature, beautiful landscapes where things are quiet and nothing major ever happens. I’ve lived there until I was 18 years old, when escaping was the only option I saw for fully expressing myself.
Photography was like a silent friend I had all along by my side but never actually figured out until it was time to decide what to do after school.
As a kid I was very creative and imaginative, music was my obsession and I had a band for three years that let me express my creativity. I was also kind of a loner, I gained a lot of energy by being alone wandering around the suburbs of my town breaking into abandoned places and uninhabitated houses and I always used to carry my little camera to capture the world around me and how I perceived it. The birth of social networks in early 2000s definitely helped me discover my curiosity in the art form itself so I began to take a lot more pictures with time, it became some sort of diary.
When it was about time to decide what path to take after school, I realized that photography has always been there with me, through the good and the bad, and it actually meant something important to me. So I moved to Rome and studied photography.

Rome is the eternal city. Roman life inspires you, or affects your work in any way?
I would say no. Rome is a wonderufl city, I’m surrounded by greatness and beauty and maybe in that sense it raised my standard of beauty in terms of aesthetic and technique, but my work is mostly influenced by personal experiences, by my family and by the people I surround myself with. Its core probably is in in the research of what makes me human and what moves me. Everything I did I dit it for personal matters, to face a struggle I was having. I wanted to deconstruct it, analyze it and rebuild it as a material form for me to see.

Did you always know photography was your ultimate go-to outlet of expression?
Absolutely not. As I mentioned before, it was a slow process and a sudden realization. As for now, I like to think that it’s the way I know best how to put myself out there in the world.

What is the best thing to being a photographer?
One of the best things in my experience is the power created among the people involved. There is always so much respect and gratitude when I look at the person I’m shooting. Other than that, in photography I love the ability to create a space in which people can linger and wonder and see themselves to a certain extent.

Do you remember what it was like to photograph a naked person for the first time in your life. How much did you and the model take for granted, light?
I do, it was for my final project at school, so almost 10 years ago. I wanted to take a picture of this beautiful friend of mine at the bottom of this underground spiral staircase of a parking lot and he asked me spontaneously with so much ease to be naked because he thought it would have been an interesting idea. After that, I started my series “MILZA” and realized I could use nudity in certain ways to express a sense of alienation and oppression putting the model in the middle of these vast and surreal environments.
I never took anything for granted because most of the people that got naked in my pictures were my lover, my friends and my family and I saw it as an act of trust not only in what I do but also in myself and I take so much joy from it. Growing up I had a conflictual relationship with my father and seeing him getting naked twice for my pictures was incredible.

Close-up portraits are quite rare in your portfolio, as if trying to approach you a little. Why is that?
Because environmen has always been my other subject in works. You have the person itself and then you have the setting, they always went hand in hand for me, there is almost no difference between negative and positive space. Space has so much power to narrate and to enrich the idea or story you are trying to tell.
It can reveal and add a lot of details and in my portraits. I also use it to tell something more about the person in the picture. For example in my series “Bedroom Tales” space has an enormous importance because the setting is the bedroom of the people portrayed and it is so interesting to see how someone’s room can talk and help you imagine and wonder who these people actually are and how it lets you enter in their wolrd. But it also has the power to raise questions, to create some sort of mistery and leave you with the freedom of thinking whatever you want to think about what is going on in what you’re looking.

You often place models in an environment. To nature, to the bedroom, etc., etc. on what basis do you choose who, what environment do you photograph?
My choices regarding setting are mostly based on how which space can help me best to say what I want to say, but also I like to choose settings based on the fantasy I want to convey.

What is the topic you love best photograph and why?
Defintely human condition and every kind of intimacy, whether it’s sexual, emotional or even social.
Each work about someone’s story is an opportunity for me to connect and to see other point of views. One person’s private world has the ability to transform in a collective experience. That’s why lately, during these extremely hard times, I’ve been more and more interested in social issues.

What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself as an artist since you started photography?
That I have my timing regarding producing and creating and I can’t stress myself out trying to please others. The most important thing is always to be kind with myself and let things be.

What do you do when you got time for yourself?
Other than overthinking too much about too many things, music never left me, friends, travelling and I also feel the constant need to be reconnected to nature as much as possible.

How do you imagine what you would most like to do in five years?
I usually would rather not think about it because I’ve always been so worried about where my actions would lead me in the future that I was losing sight of I was doing in that moment.

outtakes of ‘Bedroom Tales’ series