Professional photographer for more than thirty years, Franco Covi is always looking for new languages and new means of expression, from film to artificial intelligence.
Franco, tell us about yourself.
I started doing this job very young. First as an assistant, and then, at 21 with my own business. Actually my first camera was given to me as a present when I was 6, so it is safe to say I started fifty years ago.
As a photographer, I obviously dedicate myself to several different projects, but in a more personal artistic sense of the job I am very much still interested in the human body.
I also started, ten years ago, to create videos, to experiment. Videos that have dancers as protagonists. Today I define myself as a photographer and a video maker.
Also in your photos the protagonists come from the dance world, don’t they?
Yes, and for a while now. I find dancers much more interesting than models, because they know how to express, with their bodies, what I have in mind. I describe a situation, a concept, and they interpret it very easily because they are used to telling stories with their bodies. Very often they are female dancers, but it depends on what I want to portray with the image. For example when I decided to portray a body in a very wild and rocky landscape, I chose the body of a male dancer.
What inspires you? How are your pictures born?
It might seem strange, almost mystical, but very often I have some sort of vision, like a dream. I have something in mind, a photo, and then I see it, as in a daydream. I see the photo already printed. Very often it happens to me, that images come, and I find myself going through them like a photo album. Then, when I actually realize it, changes might occur, even together with the people being shot who – as I said – are often dancers. It is never a solo, it is a dialogue. I often use black and white but it is not a diktat. I start from the image and then sometimes I decide later on if I want to finish it in color or in black and white. In the end, today’s technology allows this and I have always been a fan of new technologies.
What are you working on now?
In this moment, I am studying the applications of artificial intelligence that allow the generation of images starting from a series of words, from a description. Many might turn up their noses, but I find this actually quite interesting. This is also a way of telling something through images. I am now in the process of understanding whether I can combine photography with these techniques, if there is a path that can be followed and also be artistically interesting.
If I had to define my photography with a word, I would say it is explorative. Both because I like to explore new techniques, and because when I “receive” my images, I explore, I investigate, what my mind is able to propose. So every time is a sort of research in the meanders of the mind, on the threshold between sleep and waking. And then, I re-create my dream.
