Kolga

Biography

I don't remember when I used a camera for the first time. I remember that as a child, wherever I went, I took with me one of those plastic cameras. One day, my father wanted to teach me how to use his camera: it was an analog Fuji SXT-2. And I started slowly. At the age of 15 he told me: «It's yours. Do what you have to do. Do what you want to do». In 2011 I took her to Berlin with my first digital SLR. In the meantime I had read some books and 3 years before I enrolled in the Faculty of Letters in Bari. I almost immediately left the Fuji and began to take an interest in politics, university struggles, the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement. I began to go to collectives, to create them, to see them die. I documented the Students Movement from 2008 to 2013, with demonstrations, anti-evinction pickets, unauthorized marches, the adrenaline of October 15th in Rome. In 2012 I buy my first smartphone and start making random photos. I took the train every day and started taking pictures of the passengers. I quit when I graduated three years ago. In the meantime I had slowly abandoned politics and everything else. Then I realized that all the photos taken on the trains and on the road with the phone maybe made sense, so I decided to organize them in a photo project. His name is "Landscapes". Thanks to the Internet, I have been able to make this project known to many people. Above on Instagram. In November 2016, after evaluating more than 86,000 photographers from all over the world, THE SMART VIEW MAGAZINE magazine (perhaps the most committed in the field of mobile photography) has included me among the 35 best mobile photographers in the world. In December 2016 Pierre Le Govic, director of the project Out Of The Phone (the first publishing house to print a photo book entirely with photos from mobile) has been interested in my project and has created a carnet de voyage with all my project, printed and edited in Paris. In February 2017, I was selected for a group exhibition at the Tevere Art Gallery in Rome, curated and printed by Luciano Corvaglia, probably the greatest Italian printer. In February, 2019, I've been selected for the "Smart photography - Be an artist today" exhibition by THE SMART VIEW in Mannheim, Germany. Last year I have been shortlisted in the Mobile One Shot categories for the Kolga Tbilisi Photo 2018. One afternoon, Francesco Zizola (legendary italian photojournalist) told me: «Greetings of good light».

Lorenzo Mangialardi's shortlisted projects

2019

Lorenzo Mangialardi

I entrust my soul to you

Three years ago, my mother Giovanna told us she had a breast cancer. I didn't want to believe it, the world fell on me. But in the same time, I told her that she was strong and brave, and that we would do everything to defeat the cancer. After chemotherapy, drugs, a surgery to remove a breast, the cancer remains there. On the contrary, he grows and moves, and he reaches the spine. Here, there a few metastasis. So, last year my mother is urgently operated on the spine. It was a very long and very difficult surgery. He risked total paralysis, but at time her spine is good and straight. But cancer is a difficult enemy to defeat, so she is still doing chemotherapy. I have photographed her and my family from the day of surgery. I hope I don't have to photograph anything anymore.

2018

Lorenzo Mangialardi

Gemma

2017

Lorenzo Mangialardi

Landscapes

I started this project in 2012. At the beginning I photographed many people on the train, during the trip from home to University. But, when I graduated I came down from the trains and I decided to walk around the streets. I called it "Landscapes" because I believe that the landscape is not only the natural one, or the "classic photographic" one. I believe that a child watching at the windows is a ladscape; a street lamp turned on at night is a landscape. I not created a reportage, I not to talk about a story. I think that every single image can tell a story. The only thing that binds together all the images is the photographic language, some gestures, the whites and the blacks of Light. Georges Brassens, the legendary french singer said "A la compagne de voyage / Dont les yeux, charmant paysage"