Home is the place where the heart is always safe.
Here, in my photo living room, I feel safe, just like at home.
This is where I take refuge – literally – to work; this is where I design, think, try, organize, welcome customers, new and old friends.
In 2012 I already had a clear idea in mind, I wanted my work to be my life but I didn’t want to mix the two things, I didn’t want one to interfere in the other’s affairs. Having a physical photographic studio, I thought (and today I love even more), was the best choice to go along with my ideas.
In my studio, I wanted first of all to feel comfortable, to feel safe.
I also wanted every person who walked in here to feel like this was exactly the only place in the world they wanted to be in that exact moment.
That’s why, at first as a joke, a close friend dubbed it a photo living room.
I wanted it to be a large, bright, high-ceilinged place, one that when you enter, you feel it ‘lives’, literally. Everything inside says it, old cameras, photo books, frames (some not very straight), plants …
Initially there was only one desk, then two, then a yellow sofa first and two red armchairs and then a cream white Chersterfield and the most beautiful photos I had taken over the years: I learned that beautiful things take time, that it takes patience and today, after about ten years and two moves, the photographic living room has exactly the shape that I imagined ten years ago, as soon as I opened it.
On the one hand, I can welcome my customers and friends, a timeless space (more than 20 clocks hanging on the wall, collected over the years, given away or loaned for the occasion and none of them marking the right time more than twice a day) but full of life: the Cherstelfiel sofa belonged to two gentlemen in northern Italy who necessarily had to leave their house in the countryside to move to the city but did not want to lose that piece of their history that restored them later the hardships of a day’s work, which listened to their dreams and saw them come true and which today listens to the dreams of every bride; a piece of furniture certainly dating back to the 40s, so I was told when a collector of period furniture saw a photo of that object, “you can see it immediately from the handles”: how many stories he will have lived!
I found that I like plants, I like to see them grow, I like to see them hibernate in winter and see them reborn as soon as spring arrives in the studio; I like to buy one and place it on a desk but in the evening see the same plant in a scene from the film and change its position the next day. I am fascinated by change, growth, it intrigues me. I like to think about what will happen tomorrow, to find solutions in advance, to organize my future.
On the other hand, I needed to have a free space to shoot: I love portraiture, I love to tell stories and through a single shot I am convinced that I can tell at least a part of each of the people I find myself in front of the camera, sometimes even the more intimate even if it is the first time we meet.
As in everything I do, in the photographic living room, in my home, emotions and technique, rationality and creativity, head and heart coexist.
www.brunellofrancesco.com