I am a long term resident and citizen of the Netherlands where I've lived and worked since 1990.
I began showing an interest in photography early on in life using my father’s camera first and then my own, a Diana Flash, a camera still in production to date, which was given to me by my aunt at the age of 8 years old.
My first approach to a more mature way to be a photographer happened when, following an impulse or a whim, I bought my first reflex camera, a Zenith E, at a street market, where the camera was sold by one of the many Jewish Russian refugees on their way to Israel from Russia.
From then on, photography became a passion, almost an obsession for me. I found that I could put myself behind a camera and achieve an almost ecstatic sense of Zen relaxation as others would achieve by way of meditation.
I was very taken by the chance that photography gave me to express myself and to find that I possessed an artistry which, prior to that, I didn’t suspect I had in me. So I went on practicing photography with joy and intense dedication but as an amateur. All this while I started pursuing photography as an art form and began exhibiting my work in shows and at galleries.
Only many years later, in 1980, I began working, quite by chance, as a free lance photographic assistant in my birthplace: Naples-Italy, and then went on to study photography and graduated in commercial and advertising photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design of Milan in 1984.
After my graduation from photography college, I kept on assisting other photographers, notably Mario Mulas who was my employer, mentor and friend, until 1986, when I started my own studio, Sunset Blvd. Studio, together with Nicola Graziani, a very good friend of mine whom had been the first photographer that I'd worked for and with in his former Neapolitan studio.
Together we had a studio in Milan for several years and worked as commercial photographers.
Once I moved to the Netherlands in 1990, I went into teaching portrait and studio photography at the “ Academie voor fotografie Amsterdam” and later on worked as a photographer for the Dutch Royal library.
My experience as a photographer includes portraits, studio and still life ( commercial or art oriented) photography but I have been known to practice many other types of photography alongside my main professional practice.
I was always a specialist of large format photography ( with formats such as 4” x5” and 8” x 10”) but few years ago, I abandoned analog photography for good and dedicated myself solely to digital photography.
I am a Fujifilm user and, on this modern digital cameras , next to more conventional mainstream autofocus lenses, I use many vintage and adapted lenses some modified by me some simply used with the aid of adapters. The results are often very different from conventional.
