With my passion for traveling and for photographic reportage I feel like I could have ended up anywhere. Maybe I did, for a while, but in the end I always made it back to Asti. More precisely in Moncalvo, in the heart of the Montferrat, but Asti is my main point of reference, from both a professional and personal points of view. As a professional photographer I always looked for its glimpses and perspectives, its people with their smiles, and its colours. I really would like to be able to catch on camera the sounds of its daily life, still at a human scale, and the smells that come out of its windows at dusk. I try, but it is not that easy. You have to shoot natural pictures, those that when you look at them you get the feeling of the sounds and smells that surrounded that moment in time. When I shoot Asti I always look for that real life mosaic that hides beneath the surface of the image itself. The one I always made it back for.
To be a photographer in Asti means never to be really cut out from the scene. The cultural and artistic scene in matters of photography is always very alive and vibrant. Expositions, shows and meetings are always scheduled somewhere in town, even as I write these words. You may just try to look up a tourist information website to get an idea. Even when photography is not at the heart of the matter, there is always to learn. Food and cooking events, the concerts and shows, just to mention a few of the typical events that populates our cultural life, they all come together to teach that aesthetic sense so important in understanding life around us and that allows us to always know where the perfect shot hides. Around the well known truffles and meat to which we dedicate our festivals, the traditional desserts that we enjoy so much during the festivities, and the live music that vibrates through the town between traditional, classical,, jazz and that popular just-for-fun sound, a unique way of life arise in Asti, one that gives itself to the right eye.
Asti is a historical town, a real one. Second only to Turin in the Piedmont. Such an abundance of monuments, landmarks and historical points of interest is a main ingredient in life around here. With a little help from its “human scale”, Asti has been able to build its social life around its squares and alleys, between churches and palaces, creating the right atmosphere for that inner aesthetic sense to thrive and make everything better. It’s not just about beauty, it is something more. It is about to see with the right perspective how people gravitates around the history of Asti, how they reinvent it and how they integrate it within their own frameworks. If I go out without my camera in Asti, I always end up feeling regret for a missed perfect shot. Corso Dante and Corso Alfieri, just to mention two of the most known arteries , they carry notable names and maybe they influence a little, maybe even unconsciously, social life in Asti today. The large squares are aggregators for social life, while the small alleys, like the ones circling around our towers Torre Rossa, Torre Quartero and Torre De Regibus, or around the numerous palaces, from Palazzo Natta to Palazzo Zoya, give us glimpses and perspectives. On life, we may say. On the other hand the squares are like ample views, as if the space around is affecting our way of behaving. It is hard to tell what I like to shoot the most between these two views. Anyway, here in Asti I can have them both.
There are those who think that wedding photography is popular incarnation of a higher art. They are wrong. In a place like Asti, a life mosaic, so rich of true beauty, that one that is spread around the town, spontaneous and ubiquitous, how could it be that the most beautiful day of anyone’s life is less? To get married in Asti is never ordinary, and this is true for the whole Montferrat. To get married here is to celebrate that quality of life that we all are grateful for, even those who pretend they are not. To grow up in Asti taught me to appreciate the fine food, to love the special one, the shades in the flavour of a good wine and of a good person. All of this is found on a wedding day in Asti, celebrated as never before. I am proud then, and surely also happy, to be a professional photographer for weddings in Asti. To shoot events, create art and participate in weddings, these are all the things that in Asti have a special flavour.
And also, no one really denies me to travel. I do it and I always will. To know that in the end I will be back to Asti is just the icing on the cake of a perfect trip.
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