Camilla Glorioso: Visual Archeology
July 8th, 2020
With a background in fashion photography, visual arts and theatre, Italian photographer Camilla Glorioso uses her camera to explore under the surface of her hometown, friends, Sicilian heritage, and the world at large. Interested in personal history, performativity and emotional connection, her works are both intimate and yet abstracted anthropological studies. Public Offerings Ltd. spoke to Camilla about her background, aesthetic and the changing face of the photography industry.
POL: First up, can you introduce our readers to who you are, your background and how you got into photography?
CG: I’m an Italian photographer, currently splitting my time between London and Venice. I grew up in Padova, where I started taking pictures when I was around 14. I had been jumping between ways to create since I was a child, always drawing a lot, sometimes painting, buying multiple tools to see if I could use that technique or the other. But photography during my teenage years became a key element for self-discovery; a great way to look at things, re-look at them after a while, shape and interpret different characters. I then studied Visual Arts and Theatre in Venice, where I found a strong interest in performativity and the female body. This research directed my focus towards fashion and led me to move to London to study Fashion Photography at LCF.
After a period as a photo agent and working as a creative producer for fashion brands and publications, my research as a photographer has developed into a more documentary approach, that translates in reportages and long term personal projects.
POL: We’re fascinated by the phrase “visual archaeology”, which we’ve seen you use many times as a way of understanding your personal photographic projects. Where does this notion come from and what does it mean to you?
CG: The phrase slowly developed whilst writing about the projects I have worked on in the past two years: every time, some notion of digging, uprooting or diving came out, and it finally translated in my mind into a very personal form of archaeology.
Exploring my hometown, my childhood friends, the way we are growing up close or far away from home, my Sicilian heritage, I realised all these elements generate a continuously expanding archive of life experiences. Like in archaeology my work studies, documents and interprets material culture, personal artefacts, and then questions the emotional connection people have to the objects that surround them, their power in telling a story.
POL: You describe yourself as “obsessively interested in the beauty of mundane objects” and you use the aesthetics of your photography to build a sense of emotional resonance with your subject, whether it’s a person or a vintage photograph. What draws you to specific subject matter? Do all of your projects come from that sense of connection to the subject or can that grow over time?
CG: Many a time, I have chosen to take a picture of an object, to piece together someone’s story, or convey a specific emotional tone, as I believe everyday objects have an incredible power. In a sense, they retain energy from owners and users. I might notice this resonance because I spent my childhood giving proper names to inanimate objects, clothes, and home appliances with my mum. Something which I think opened my mind to playfulness and creativity the most.
We as humans discard an incredible number of objects along the way during life. For me, they are all traces, they speak a story that can be read and interpreted and sometimes can be truer than images of humans, if portrayed in the right way.
For my personal research, I do tend to start from subjects dear to me, generally connected to my past or present, as photography still has that element of self-discovery for me, its language has developed and aged just as I have. When it comes to reportage and documentary work, however, I do use the exact same tools and process. Which helps me develop that sense of connection, even to subjects that are not necessarily immediately close or dear to me.
POL: Your personal work is documentary based, however you mentioned you received an MA in Fashion Photography from the London College of Fashion. In the popular consciousness, these two different veins of photography have very different styles. Do you find having a background in fashion has influenced your documentary work and vice versa?
CG: I think, luckily, fashion visual material is now letting in different influences and types of photography. I see much more of a documentary approach both in design and in communication, with a special eye towards street casting in fashion stories and, slowly, more openness and variety of stories and experiences.
For me, fashion photography and reportage can be the same thing. I spent years while studying, trying to shoot in the studio with beautiful models and complex concepts, but in reality, this was just not right for me.
I love the sociological and anthropological aspect of fashion: the active choice of adding an accessory, a colour, to conform to a style or to wear second-hand pieces. All of this telling the story of a person. Of course, it’s not all, there is a lot more beneath the surface of a person, and you can not, and should not limit you’re thinking to what someone is wearing. But, for me, there is an incredible sense of discovery in clothes.
Again, as my language has evolved, and the way I work on myself through photography has changed, so has my approach towards fashion: give me an old Italian lady with a brooch and a matching cardigan, give me a kid with a hole on the knee of her trousers, a pressed shirt hanging in a bedroom waiting to be worn. To me, these are all incredible documentary stories, and they are fashion stories.
POL: You also mentioned you studied a BA in Visual arts and Theatre, and there does feel like there is an almost theatrical element in your photography work. For example in Scenario you captured tourists in Italy, which read almost as characters on a set, stereotypes or cyphers for tourism in general, rather than as representations of individual people. How have you found that your background with theatre informs your aesthetic? Do you feel that abstractions can tell a narrative in a way that in-depth portraits sometimes cannot?
CG: I think there is an interest in the scene as a whole, in background characters (human or non-human) and how they can influence the story, as if members of the Chorus in a Greek tragedy - as my partner once described it.
I think performativity is an aspect that comes back in this sense, looking at my journey: I would say the interest here is “how”. How people move, how they interact, how they dress. For this type of research, I do not necessarily care about pinpointing the individual, rather I want to capture a scene, a situation, or even an emotional landscape.
“I do not necessarily care about pinpointing the individual, rather I want to capture a scene, a situation, or even an emotional landscape.”
POL: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
AL: I am working on a new series on “pawdicures”. I have a serious obsession with nails. It's something i've spent a lot of time photographing over the years. Instead of humans I wanted to focus on dog manicures - which are very much a thing.
Pre-pandemic I was planning on teaming up with a creative dog groomer to do this, but now with Covid I am just doing the manicures myself. My one dog is a very patient and beautiful model!
I've discovered I'm actually pretty good at it too, if I do say so myself! I'm excited to release the pictures whenever it's done.
POL: You’re a member of Female Narratives, collective and creative agency, how have you found being a female creator in an industry that is still dominated by men? Where would you like to see photography as an industry be in five to ten years time?
CG: In my own career, so far, I have been lucky enough to work with many incredible female creators because, I believe, I joined the industry in a moment of shift and surrounded myself with people willing to make the change, to do the work and the research.
First of them is, in fact, Female Narratives. It was started by two incredible young women, who managed in a few years to bring together over 100 female creatives from around the world. Building not only a strong network and a safe space, but a creative agency that is successfully pursuing their initial goal: tell real stories by female creatives. They offer a different perspective in an industry still so strongly dominated by the male point of view. They are offering something that, thankfully, more and more clients are looking for.
As for now, I believe 2020 is bringing to the surface once again many different levels of inequality that need to be addressed by each of us, in every aspect of society. As a female photographer I feel we are working towards a more balanced industry, but I am aware I had many other privileges to back me up and give me all the opportunities I had so far.
I hope the big, painful turmoil that is shaking the first year of this new decade will bring real awareness to all the changes that need to be made. We need to tell all stories, all points of view, we need to change the way we bring the very same people to positions of power and perpetuate the same narrative over and over again. This applies to the creative industry as much as to the wider world.
POL: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?
CG: I am spending these months in Venice and slowly re-discovering its people and places, settling back into rhythms I forgot while living in London. It is a moment of stillness and uncertainty in a way, but so far it’s giving me the chance to observe, experiment, and nourish my research.
In a few weeks I will head to Sicily once again to work on the second chapter of my project Familiar: Archivio Affettivo Siciliano and then focus on new art editions, while continuing snapping around town in search of old and new subjects.
About Camilla Glorioso
Camilla Glorioso is a freelance photographer and creative producer based between London and Venice.
She currently combines her work as a photographer with her experience in production, collaborating with fashion brands and publications while taking the time to research and nourish long term photographic projects.
Glorioso received her MA Fashion Photography at London College of Fashion, UAL (2015/16) and a BA Visual Arts and Theatre in Venice, IUAV University.