Massimiliano Landi

The Trivial Beauty. Photographing is simple, you don’t need great technical skills or to know a lot about technique. The challenge is what to point your camera at and when to click!
I’m not interested in sharp and stylistically perfect pictures, my images just represent a part of what I see that could be photographed in the usual everyday life, with or without sun, with or without flash. All I look for is to impress what I believe deserve to be impressed in my journey.
I would simply call my work: “street photography” – not because of the results, but because of the attitude when taking pictures.
What I mean by that is being out with a camera and shooting what attracts your attention. The attitude of a street photographer is to be in the streets without a clear plan in mind and capture what comes to them.
One thing I always say to my friends when they ask me about photography: I hate photography! But I love street photography. It seems a paradox, but it is so, I see them as two totally different realities.
I see “street photography” in this way: the world around us reveals situations and scenes that surpass our imagination. Observation and learning how to observe is the fundamental skill for a street photographer. Things are out there, and it’s up to us to go out and not let them run away.
In public places, I always try to be spontaneous. I do not go out only to take pictures, but I always have a camera in my pocket. This makes everything spur-of-the-moment. The only things I have established are the manual settings of the camera. Once set, I just have to grab the camera and shoot. For my shots I prefer simplicity, having very few elements in the frame creates clarity and reduces the shot to its essence.
I’m interested in exceptional people, ordinary people, unusual gestures, simple gestures, colored tourists… I also like the particular light conditions on abandoned objects, service stations, old curtains in old houses – anything that may seem trivial but really isn’t. Street photography isn’t just about people.
In short, what I’m looking for is what I call: “The Trivial Beauty”!

Photographer: Massimiliano Landi

Country: Italy

Bio: I was born in Ancona – Italy, in 1983; now I live in Senigallia, where I work and enjoy my life. I’ve always been passionate about abstract paintings and I started out with photography mainly to practice with a more democratic form of art. I started with an old 1986 Russian SLR my father gave me, but I soon understood that big cameras are not for me. Therefore I bought a small compact camera that I can bring in my pocket every day, wherever I go.
Co-founder and member of SUPERLUNA Collective – https://superluna.org/.