Iacopo Pasqui is an Italian photographer, whose work is predominantly focused on documentary and fine art photography. He studied Communication Sciences at the University of Teramo. In 2008 he started a research on color and light, working in the Middle East and North Africa. Back in Italy, since 2011 he began to document the daily life of the Western world, studying the social and cultural landscape of his own continent and how human behavior affects and in turn influenced by it. His attention is focused on the ever-changing landscapes and on what often is not in sight: bizarre and abnormal human behavior, the fiction and fetishes of everyday life, and all that is usually called trivial. From these ideas stemmed the work Uncommontime, about the non-places of his city of residence, playing on the dichotomy between reality and fiction in the everyday. This project was one of three winners (among 47,000 participants) of the Talent Award Leica 2011, gaining a collaboration with Leica Camera and Magnum Photos Italy. Today we share Iacopo’s series titled Rural Layers.
Rural Layers
Rural layers is a photographic project made during the artist residency at the Bitumen PhotoFest in August of 2015 in the south of Italy, specifically in Salento. The work comprises two of the fourteen municipalities of the GAL Serre Salentine, Matino and Sannicola/Lido Conchiglie. The photographs focus on the landscape and on the elements that characterize the sights and the atmosphere of this part of Italy. Specifically, for the city of Matino, I tried to tell and show two of the most significant aspects in my opinion and in contradiction with each other: the symbolic part and reality / earthly.
On the one hand and areas heavily caratterrizate attached to faith and religion, with a significant presence of symbols and Christian elements, on the other, the attachment to the land, understood as a natural element predominates. These areas of Salento are still very rural, dominated by manual and old jobs. Landscapes where urban architectures tend to horizontality, highlighting a sense of abandonment, neglect and suspension that permeates daily life. Due to these characteristics seem to places outside the contemporary context and distant from the problems of the Western world.
Additionally, in 2012, Iacopo Pasqui was included as the youngest contemporary photographer in the book History of Photography in Italy. From 1839 to the Present by Gabriele D’Autilia, one of the most influential historians of photography in Italy. Iacopo Pasqui lectures in photography and visual culture at the University of Teramo. He also teaches photographic language and landscape photography in many differents courses and workshop. He has produced and published the artist’s book Uncommontime. He also worked with the publishing house “Librìa”, specialized in architecture and landscape. He published “Le Stanze di Tonia” with Lucio Rosato (Librìa, Melfi 2012); “La città Adriatica” AA.VV curated by Lucio Rosato, pictures by Iacopo Pasqui (Librìa, Melfi 2012). “Il Clonclave di Papa Francesco” curated by Alberto Melloni (Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da “G.Treccani”, Roma 2013).
To view more of Iacopo Pasqui’s work please visit his website.