This is an unpublished project premiered today on C41 Magazine.
Pietro Bernocchi was born in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano (Italy) in 1994. After completing the bachelor’s degree in Earth science at the University of Pavia, he moved to Milan to attend a master’s degree in photography and visual arts at Brera Academy of Fine Arts. He has been interested in photography since his first university years trying to capture the authentic emotions of ordinary people leading ordinary lives. His first photo project is a conceptual meditation on the five senses; in particular the importance of smell as a powerful medium to activate memories. Three artists have inspired his work, they are Bill Brandt, Imogen Cunningham, and Nino Frassica.
About ‘Mediterranee’ – words by Pietro Bernocchi:
Photography is the visual representation of what I see but also of what I smell. This concept has driven my need to photograph durinig my last summer.
When I was a child, I used to go on holiday with my family to Sardinia. Every time we arrived in an isolated and unspoiled beach, Titti, a friend of my father, told us children to breathe deeply and memorize those mediterranean smells. She said that during the winter months,the memory of these smells would be able to take us back to our past sunny summer.
I have tried to apply this philosophy ever since and expecially when I am travelling.
In my opinion, smell is often neglected compared to the other senses. In fact, it is the most powerful of all because it is able to trigger quickly a stream of images in my mind.
Unfortunately today there isn’t still a way to record smell, but we can photograph those objects, people, animals or places whose memories of smell can take our mind far away in time and space.
This series is a collection of mediterranean close-up snapshots. These photograps have been shot really close to the object’s surface, so that my sense of smell can be actived, too. They evoke through my eyes memories of last summer’s smell. These are like a fireplace that warms me up in cold winter nights.
