Luca Anzalone’s photographs twist the stereotypical narratives of classical culture

Luca Anzalone’s photographs blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality; their surreal, performative quality twists the “stereotypical narratives of classical culture”, he explains. “What we constantly struggle to define as reality is just an illusion in our brains”, Luca tells us, “I’d rather play with that concept”. His images are reminiscent of an Alice in Wonderland-like world, a mixture of logic and nonsense juxtaposed to create experimental and theatrical photos with a scent of subtly and grace that is deeply sensual.

“I always want to push the boundaries of what you can feel within my images”, Luca tells It’s Nice That, “I am interested in producing art that can evoke an illusion of something we could perceive in the real world”. The artist’s images are all about touch. They feature the constant relationship between model and material, with a variety of fabrics, meshes, paints, chalks and objects. “I like to see photographs as imaginative doors”, he explains, “into an inner universe where we can half remember how the photograph would seem in real life and half recreate it from scratch”. These scenes are all about the power of the spectator’s imagination, drawing on all five of the senses to recreate an unreal memory in our mind.

Nature and the environment have always influenced his work. Luca initially studied biology, chemistry and agriculture before applying for a photography degree. “There is so much art in nature”, he comments, “that moment of perfection within imperfection has the power to connect my body and soul”. He is also inspired by the Impressionists, “whose mix of realness and abstraction of tones and shapes” has strongly resonated with him. Similarly seeing a creative work as expressive of the artist’s emotion, Luca comments, “after completing a work I always realise I’ve unintentionally expressed something that I didn’t originally think about”. The stories tend to be about “inner emotions and subtle moments”, and in their strange surreality, they capture the viewer’s attention.