Social commitment with one click: Interview with Nicola Zolin   

By The Holland Times Saturday 19 December 2009, 17:12

Seeing a picture is not merely watching a building, a street or a face: it is getting to know the world through images. Photography is one of the most effective ways to understand the world and society and, at the same time, to encourage conversation. In a book, a picture tells the truth while at the same time inspiring a journey of imagination.

Speaking with Nicola Zolin, a young Italian freelance photojournalist and social worker, The Holland Times introduces you to a  man behind the image. Zolin's latest show of pictures will open 11 October in The Hague's Galerie 't Fotocabinet and will run until 1 November.

Do you define your work as art or as photo-reportage?

I don't feel like defining the kind of photographer I am, I think I just try to catch emotions, calling my photos art instead of photo-reportage is a job that I can easily leave to critics and journalists. According to me, my photography is nothing more than the expression of my emotions. I photograph subjects that represent my state of feelings, my actual dimension, my level of freedom. I am my photos in the moment I take them. I naturally identify myself with my subjects in the moment I shoot.

Could you describe what photography means from your point of view?

Photography for me is about growing independently as a person, setting deeply free my sensibility, unveiling my fears and opening my eyes to things that I was not able to notice without a camera. Photography has been for me the first step of a limitless process of discovering and understanding. Everything I look to could be reality, could be illusion, could be nothing and could be everything. You have the honour of choosing which kind of emotions I pass on to you!

I believe photography is an incredibly useful tool for telling stories: so many things are concealed behind a simple picture, so many different things we can perceive of it, sometimes entire personalities, events, we could even smell some pictures and get the sensation of having been a witness.

How do you consider the relation between media and suffering? Do you think media nowadays take advantage of suffering?

Suffering is a difficult emotion to capture; the photographer must handle it carefully, while sometimes it is extremely effective for describing the harshness of a situation, some others the risk of oversteping the level of intimacy of the subject is too risky.

It is a photographer task to not offend the user with the hardness of the photo, is a photographer's task to not use sufferance as a key for his own success; ethics is an fundamental value for photo-journalism according to me.

Is your photography connected to your social commitment?

Yes! My passion for photography and my social commitment practically started together. Photography has been for me opening my eyes widely, therefore my commitment in the society is a result of all the thoughts my camera help me siulate. I developed an attitude to look at reality from a different and unaffected perspective, I subsequently felt obliged to do something more than just taking and showing photos of what is going on in society's everyday life.

What do you feel in that click?

Every click is an attempt to transform what I see and what I feel in an harmonious union. The image is always pure in front of me; photography is the freedom of choosing black and white instead of colours, light, saturation, angles and blurring effects as I prefer in order to express exactly how I see my subject deeply inside of me.

Have you found "space" to show your art in the Netherlands?

I found for the first time in The Hague the possibilities to exhibit my works to the public. I had the chance to realize a big travel photo exhibition last year in The Haagse Hogeschool, thanks to the help of the cultural office of the school and various funds from Dutch foundations. In Italy, the situation is way more complicated, you need to be an old and famous name to be considered. Not many people are ready to believe in you, the moto is "there is no money for that." Photographically speaking, I must thank The Hague for the opportunities this city gave to me for expressing myself as best.

Why should people see your photo exhibition?

Why come to see my pictures? You will probably be curious to see how you can frame ten different feelings on a 30x40 piece of wall! So, relax, free your mind, come to the galery, and take your journey, free to go wherever you feel. (MARZIA PAPAGNA)

 

For further info: www.fotokabinet.nl/ www.nicolazolin.com