20 / 20 / 200 is a special anniversary portfolio produced by Micamera for its 20th anniversary Read here
MATTEO DI GIOVANNI (Pescara, 1980)
Untitled #37, 2020 (from Blue Bar)
In 2014, I moved to Milan. To be frank, I didn’t know much about Northern Italy. Just a few trips here and there, nothing more. I had always preferred other destinations. But I was aware of the famous River Po, the 652 km stretch of water that cuts Italy into two parts, geographically and culturally.
Once on a foggy day, I came across a very peculiar bar with a huge hedge just in front of it. I took a photograph and went on. I didn’t really know where I was and never saw that bar again on my future explorations.
On the very last trip, I made myself a promise: I would find that bar. During one of the last days I was on the road, I recognised the canal that led to that bar and found it at last. Its name happened to be Blue Bar.
At the end, every journey is about searching for something.
(Matteo Di Giovanni)
Matteo Di Giovanni’s work deals with personal, intimate, social and anthropological issues, focusing on the themes of memory, identity and human limitations. His landscape photographs reveal a tension between nature and civilisation.
He received a MA in Documentary Photography at the University of Westminster in London in 2012.
So far, he has published three monographs, I wish the world was even (2019), Blue Bar (2020) and I had to shed my skin (2022). All published by Artphilein Editions, Lugano.
The three bodies of work form a “loose trilogy”, which has been exhibited in a solo show titled True Places Never Are at Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin in June 2023.
