Photographer Marco Simonelli
From an early age, I found in photography a privileged tool through which to observe the world with a certain detachment. My initial path was shaped by the use of analogue film and essential means, fostering a direct relationship with light and the construction of the image. Over the years, photography has become a field of continuous study and experimentation. I gradually came to understand that form, light, and matter are not merely compositional elements, but devices through which to explore less visible aspects of a complex and often contradictory reality. From this awareness emerged a photographic approach grounded in the analysis of the human condition and its multiple layers of meaning.
Alongside my artistic research, between 2014 and 2024 I also worked in the field of professional photography, producing services for individuals and companies. This experience helped refine my gaze and develop a disciplined approach to the project, without interrupting my personal path of visual investigation, which I pursued consistently alongside other professional activities.
Over time, I have participated in several photographic exhibitions and promoted national-level photography competitions within a law enforcement body in which I served. These experiences contributed to the development of a critical perspective open to the diverse expressions of photography and to its conceptual intersections with other artistic languages.
Only in recent years has the need emerged to share my research within the context of the art market. Photography, understood as a form of art, requires for me a deep attention to the emotional dimension and a progressive movement toward a more intimate and philosophical investigation of existence. From this necessity arise the conceptual themes that today form the core of my work.
My visual and cultural formation draws upon the tradition of the great masters of painting, as well as experimental photography of the early twentieth century and the artistic avant-gardes, understood not as formal models but as active references within an ongoing critical dialogue.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
The Photography of Chaos
I create images that challenge the perception of reality, exploring an intimate and conceptual dimension of existence. My work emerges from the dialogue between material reality and what within it remains invisible, in a constant tension between form and disorder, presence and dissolution. Just as life and matter arise from chaos, my photographic research takes shape from fragmented inner elements not yet recomposed.
Through experimentation, I construct contexts in which the coordinates of time and space weaken, allowing non-univocal possibilities of meaning to surface. Colours, lines, and objects are selected and transformed to generate realities that do not aim to represent the world, but to suggest thoughts. Photography thus becomes a conceptual tool, capable of moving beyond mere reproduction and opening itself to territories of hypothesis and relationship.
The creative process is nourished by technique, memory, everyday experience, and emotion, within an unstable balance between control and unpredictability. From this synthesis emerge works that propose new forms of reflection and contemplation. Chromatic research and the contamination of visual languages are central elements of my practice, as I consider chaos not as a loss of meaning, but as the origin of every possible form.
My works occupy a conceptual and metaphysical territory, at times crossed by surrealist suggestions, in a conscious dialogue with the artistic languages of the past. The research moves through the domains of the unconscious, where emotions and perceptions prevail over objective reality. In works devoted to Life, the human figure is central; in those related to Matter, the human presence is physically absent yet evoked. The Photography of Chaos represents my contribution to a photographic practice that explores that threshold where the material and the inner dimensions of existence come into contact.