ALBERTO MORETTI
with Giulia Iacolutti
I N D I A N F A C E S
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The photographic project INDIAN FACES started with the 2010 NYIFF by taking the portraits of many among the Festival guests.
In my portraiture work I have always a lot of time to study the subject, to decode it, to find out the better way to read and interpretate the charatcter, the mood, the weak points, the strong sides and so on: one hour at least, sometimes three. INDIAN FACES forced me to do all this in a few minutes: for example, I've had two minutes only with Mani Ratnam and Suhasini, three minutes with Salman Rushdie, and this was absolutely difficult and exciting; a match against the time, an instant and soft war with whoever was in front of me.
In my work I'm interested in persons' soul, in their deep essence. I believe my peculiar ability is to be able to find it and to slip my camera exactly there. Specifically, shooting actors, dancers, directors, writers, and all those who use to split or multiplicate their personality because of their job, means to be able to destroy all their automatic attitudes of acting. So, during INDIAN FACES shooting, I ask everybody not to act, and moreover to "look at the camera and feel inside yourself": probably a direct way to bringing out and make visible our own history, culture, traditions, and to obtain throughout the eyes some traces of that incredibile Country which is: INDIA.
Therefore photographic portaiture is a matter of mood, of relationship with the subject, that sometimes needs a lot of words and other times absolute silence.
For this project I'm working with the young photographer Giulia Iacolutti. She has the precious talent of silently creating the right mood and atmosphere for good shooting conditions, operating with her "photographic body" (that she knows well because of her past as dancer), moving around as a magnetic compass needle and shooting herself from topping points of view. Me and Giulia then work together on everything concerns the choice and the post production of the photographies.
I know the very coloured Indian Photography, and I had the temptation to compare this work of mine to it. But I can't forget that nowadays what I consider to be the original Language of Photography can be easily distracted by colours that everybody can digitally use, a sort of contemporary Mannerism. The black and white, on the opposite, cannot lie, cannot veil the Photography and the Author's intention.
I hope not to disappoint anybody with this work: the aim of Photography is to achieve the Beauty through its own language, without be influenced by what is beautiful to the eyes.
At this step of my mosaic, I have a collection of indian moods that everybody can see all over the world: this is, also, the power of cinema.
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