So many years, perhaps too many, have passed since in a remote village in Italy, Bivona, Sicily I started taking pictures using for some time an Agfa Silette. Then, I bought  an Alpa 10d, a fine camera, although awkward and slow to use.  Then as now I am convinced that it is not the camera that  makes  a person a good photographer, but it is certain that the creative or technical perfection simply needs  the right tools.  Standard  lens have been joined by a 28 Angénieux  and a 100  Kinoptik:  incomparable  performance lenses;  the Alpa 10d has  been joined by another body, the 11si and  by many other cameras : Nikon, Leica R6…, but  the Alpa was always the favourite one. I spent the afternoons  printing in B & W my  pics.  Marriage, children, the lack of space: I had to give up printing  and the magnifier ended up  in a closet, but , though rarely, I continued  making slides using the legendary Kodachrome 25.
Some years ago my wife’s untimely death: solitude silence suffering.

Since I retired a few years ago (I was an Italian and Latin teacher at high schools), and thanks to  the Leica M240’s  release as well, on which I could mount my favourite  lenses, I have started photographing  again,  favoring black and white  more than color, I remain faithful to the simplicity and purity of B & W. I am convinced that photography, if it manages to reveal the essence of reality, can also be a way to fix the life that is now, today, not tomorrow: life is a value in itself, regardless  anything  else.
Years of photography with film and print have left their mark: I hardly control a click on the monitor; and so during my  last trip I said to a lady who was amazed that taking the photo again  would not produce the same result. A little delay  and the scene changes  as well as  the meaning.
I love travelling , I am curious to see different people, new countries and bring back from these trips at least two, three effective shots ; much more than this I like plunging  myself in the atmosphere of a city, loitering aimlessly, focusing my attention on everything around me: may be photographing those two ladies with whom I exchanged  some accomplice smiles a few minutes before and who, like every day, were performing their daily ritual, meeting, drinking together, chatting. I always try to make the most important aspect of a landscape, a corner of the city, a person in a portrait. I love photographing the female body, the purity of its lines.
For the second time this summer I was in Mykonos for the IPA Meet;  I went to Delos on a very windy day, photographing the ruins almost out of duty. Then, in front of me, a hill: I was moving through the tall grass waving in the wind,  from where I  took a picture of  the hill: “floating like the wind,” one of the comments to the image. Furthermore, in the case of the photo of the girl looking at the sea, at dusk, I caught  a particular moment: “intriguing and full of sensuality”, the comment.
Photographer only for passion, trying to catch those fragments of reality that the camera, and only it can fix and crystallize.
It is with great pleasure, but also with a little fear, that I share my photos and my reflections: such is the quality of photographers I stay together in this remarkable gallery today. Thanks to Spyro and IPA who made this possible.

giò lo conti

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