Photographer Marco Simonelli
I was born in 1956 and from a young age I have been fascinated by the world of photography. Despite limited resources and the initial difficulties of understanding how film worked, like many others I began by discovering the surrounding world, photographing whatever captured my imagination. I soon realized that form, light, and matter are merely tools through which to observe less evident aspects of a complex and chaotic reality.
From this awareness began a path of study and experimentation that continues to this day with the same passion and undiminished enthusiasm. Between 2014 and 2024, this commitment also extended to commercial photography, producing work for individuals and companies.
My photographic journey, pursued alongside other professional activities, has developed as a continuously evolving process, grounded in an analytical approach to the human condition. This path has fostered a critical and open attitude toward the various forms of photographic expression and their conceptual cross-contaminations. Over the years, I have taken part in several photographic exhibitions and organized national photography competitions for a police force in which I served.
Only recently have I felt the need to share my photographic work within the art market. Conceiving photography as an art form, in my view, presupposes a profound understanding of emotions: whereas I initially limited myself to observing and recording, over time I felt compelled to explore the deeper and more philosophical aspects of existence. From this impulse emerged a focus on specific conceptual themes that now form the core of my work.
I believe that artists, in any field, have always been the uncomfortable voices of our consciences. From a technical and cultural standpoint, the great masters of painting—from the linear painting of the fourteenth century onward—the experimental photography of the early twentieth century, and the artistic avant-gardes remain a constant source of inspiration for me.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
The Photography of Chaos
I create images that challenge the perception of reality, exploring the intimate and conceptual dimension of existence. My work arises from the encounter between material reality and its metaphysical revelation, in a constant dialogue between the visible and the invisible. Just as life and matter originate from primordial chaos, my photographic research takes shape from the disordered elements of the inner universe.
Through experimentation, I investigate contexts in which the coordinates of time and space lose their consistency, allowing new possibilities of meaning to emerge. Colors, lines, and objects are selected and transformed to construct alternative realities that do not aim to represent the world, but to suggest thoughts. Photography thus becomes a conceptual tool: it transcends the limits of mere reproduction and opens up to dimensions in which it is possible to conceive, merge, and hypothesize.
The creative process, unique and unrepeatable, is nourished by technique, memory, everyday experience, the emotion of the moment, study, and experimentation. From this synthesis arise works that offer new messages and new prompts for meditation. Chromatic research and the contamination of styles are fundamental elements of my practice, as I believe that art, like life, finds its origin in chaos.
My works inhabit a conceptual and metaphysical territory, at times infused with surreal suggestions, in continuity with the artistic languages of the past yet open to multiple interpretations. Unlike Abstract Art and Expressionism, my imagery retains a visual certainty: what appears is always the result of a revealed reality.
The research moves through the depths of the unconscious, where emotions and sensations prevail over objective reality. In works dedicated to Life, the human figure is central; in those related to Matter, the human presence is physically absent yet evoked and profoundly present. The Photography of Chaos represents my contribution to a form of photography that investigates an imaginary universe, situated in that middle ground between the material and the metaphysical dimensions of existence.