In aesthetics there exists the notion of Beauty. And beauty is often associated to the concept of the sacred. The idea being that when aesthetics is viewed as a harmonious mix of proportions, it reflects the majestic awe of the creation of all there ever was, is or will be. Plotinus on Beauty commented, Human Beings are suspended halfway between the Gods and the beasts. Beauty nudges Humanity toward the Gods

I started photography in 1974. I had studied existential philosophy and psychology at university in Pittsburgh. My next step after university was not very clear. I had already done a two-year night school program in design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh while studying at university during the day. So following an intuition, I bought a camera and a couple of lens and took a one-and-a-half-hour a week course on photography for three months at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Association. Nine months later I was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts artist-in-residence for two years.

My very first images were photo compositions and photograms designed on the easel. I still vividly remember the magic of photography at three in the morning while working alone in the darkroom at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Association and seeing images mystically appear in the developing tray. In comparison, the digital age of today, though very advantageous for many reasons, is a very superficial age. Its mysticism runs along surfaces without depth.

And even though after my artist-in-residence I went on to teach photographic composition at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I was always drawn toward journalism. During my first years of photography I was regularly free-lancing for Associated Press in Pittsburgh. So eventually I went back to university to study journalism.

I later worked for few years as a photographer, journalist and in the editorial department of a couple small newspapers. Desiring to expand my cultural horizons, I decided to leave the States, and I moved to Italy where I eventually raised a family. After a few years in Italy photography became a distant experience, and I found a post as a professor at the Università degli Studi di Torino to teach English. I also privately taught courses on communication for executives in corporations.

When I worked in journalism, I was convinced it was necessary to report the atrocities Human Beings perpetrated on other Human Beings. I, as many others, believed that the harsh information revealing our brutality if disseminated to the masses would convince us to change our behavior. And while teaching at university my opinions did not change much. I still insisted on telling it like was.

It was not until 2006, when I wrote a booklet entitled Humanity in Chaos, that I had a change in perspective. In a section entitled The cosmic field of humanity’s oneness I mentioned the Butterfly Effect as related to the work of Edward Lorenz who in 1961 observed how a slight decimal change in a numerical computer model could result in a completely different weather pattern. The point was that if his observations were correct, seemingly insignificant changes could have unimaginable effects on our environment. From this someone poetically suggested, does the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

After not having done a photograph for more than 20 years, I started to photograph again in 2008. In this period I was still captivated by the notion of the butterfly effect. The question that arose was, if we decide to stand up, sit down, walk or run, does it change something in a far off place in the world? The notion is directly related to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness. Do we think before acting or do we act mindlessly by mental default?

Applying this to photography, the question I asked myself was, if we propagate images of violence and degradation, do these images ripple throughout our world and augment their proportion creating violence and degradation in our lives, even in distant lands? Accordingly, I changed my perceptions on how I wanted to now propose my images.

Most of my work today reflects my search for Beauty. A few examples are San Francisco Street Portraits, images of the homeless. Rather than insist on the clichés of the homeless as being drunk, drugged and less than human, I desired to mirror onto the camera their dignity as Human Beings. Alice in Dûsseldorf is a series illustrating the beauty of reflected images on the surfaces of what are often polluted lakes, rivers or canals. Vanishing Beauty pictures the remnants of poetic beauty of a typical small town which is probably economically and demographically dying as society transitions from a traditional economy to a digital economy. Lumière . Lumen . Lux documents for one year the passage of light through the interior of the Abbaye Saint-Philibert which was built around 1019.

When visualizing my reality, I prefer to live with the Gods.