Interview with Portrait photographer Loredana Denicola | MONOVISIONS

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2025

– How and when did you become interested in photography?

I have been interested in Photography 7 years ago while I was in London. One of my friend, photographer, gave me a compact camera and told me to shoot images randomly. He liked them and pushed me to go deeper. After the first week I enrolled to a short basic photography course in Tower Hamlets for professional practice of Photography where I learned about SRL cameras, film black and white and darkroom. It was a real magic world. Very fascinating. And from there my adventure started.

– Is there any artist/photographer who inspired your art?

There, after a while, in the library of the college I discovered Diane Arbus. She is known for creating intense black and white photographs of very unusual people. She used square shaped images. Often her subjects look sad, conflicted or physically abnormal. But they do not try to hide their insecurities. They openly stare at the camera. One art expert said Diane Arbus turned photography inside out. Instead of looking at her subjects, she made them look at her. I love many others – few of them are Sally Mann, Mapplerthorpe, Lartigue..

– Why do you work in black and white rather than colour?

I divide my work in personal and commercial. My personal, documentary work is in black and white and my commercial is in colour and digital.

Lately, for my projects, I use a Mamiya II 6×7 with BW films. Black and White adds a timeless, fine art/documentary appeal to an image. It transcends reality and transforms an image into something special, pure, raw. I think black and white pictures give a sense of nostalgic/ sentimental/ more personal feeling and the tonalities and contrast, especially if we use film, are more stronger. This romance fascinating me. I love the magic process of photography.

– How much preparation do you put into taking a photograph/series of photographs?

My photography process doesn’t have a lot of preparation and I think is very visible in my images. I work with natural light, handheld and sometimes I use a tripod. I try to lose control during the photography session, it is a sort of meditative mental state where I concentrate all the energy and connection on the person I am photographing.

I think connection is an important part of the photographic process. When you are vulnerable you can reach the other person vulnerability and all can happen. This vulnerability is the beauty of a portrait, when you can enter to a secret/sacred space where all is possible. I think that this is marvelous.

– Where is your photography going? What projects would you like to accomplish?

I know where I am going in the long term and I know that it takes time and patience to create your own vision. I started photography 7 years ago and it is a continuum learning process. It will never end.

Lately I am quite busy in developing few documentary projects with strangers trying to express my philosophy of life and way of thinking. Love, sex, life and death are my themes of interest.

My projects started seriously last year. The first one is called “I am Your Mirror (3 pictures are on my website) where I take pictures of strangers found on Internet .

These strangers, unpaid, were free to choose a time and place to be photographed. They could express themselves as they wished, and could be anonymous, or not. I asked the strangers to look at the camera as if a mirror. Then, I asked to write down a few words, something that could represent them.

With photography we can unlock doors but we can also disturb ourselves, as when we look in a mirror. Do we like what we see?

The second project I am working on is about “Love Sex and Relationship” and involved couples.

It’s still working in progress.

What I want to achieve is firstly developing my own vision and create some kind of conversation within myself and others and in the future present my projects to few galleries. I want to be involved in documentary projects around the world, finding new people related stories throughout research and documenting them. I believe in the power of images to advance Social change. Then if you work hard, all will come, I think.

Website: loredanadenicola.com