Renzo Rizzo Photography
I take pictures of people and places. A lot of them are taken in Rome, the city where I live, a city of intense colors and stunning skies, filled with the fascinating traces of a long history. For me Rome is not only the Colosseum or Saint Peter, nor its traffic and crowds of tourists. It is a city of narrow cobblestone lanes, of yellow and orange walls, of small stores and bars, of cloisters and street lamps. In Rome like anywhere else, I try to photograph beauty and catch a moment of grace, to create order from the chaos of everyday life. I do not want to specifically represent a place, but rather use the elements available on the streets and landscapes in front of me to compose an impression and convey an emotion. I take a lot of shots in the evening, often following my constant fascination with blues and yellows. Sometimes I shoot though shop windows or reflections, playing the difference between inside and outside.
All the people in my pictures are just passersby, spontaneous and mostly unaware that they are being photographed. I always try to put my subjects in the best light, and I never photograph people in distress out of respect and also because I believe that difficulty and drama are already over-photographed. My mission as a photographer instead is to seek and spread instances of beauty and grace that are part of every day.
Finally, I love to do portraits too and help the people I photograph to be at their best, to convey who they are and shine. Sometimes I succeed.
One of the reasons that drove me to photography is to preserve a memory and prolong a moment. I started with pictures of my family and have thousands of such moments recorded. But then I continued shooting the many beautiful places that we touched in our travels. At the beginning I tried to exclude the random people, other tourists or locals, who where getting in the way of a monument, landscape or building. But then I realized that a photograph has more meaning if there is people in it. This way it is not trees, stones and streets that are in the pictures, but a specific moment, unique because of the people who were there at the time.
So my street photographs, landscapes and even more so my portrait and spontaneous pictures of friends, family and - occasionally - models, exist to make memory and emotion last more than the fleeting moment within which it happens.
If you want to contact me for a print or a specific photographic project please write to renzo.rizzo@icloud.com