You wouldn’t guess it from Alessio Albi’s work—radiant portraits of feminine beauty—but it was darkness that set this 31-year-old from Perugia, Italy down the path of photography.
“More than five years ago, during a struggle with depression, I realized that taking photographs was making me feel better,” Albi shares with AdoramaTV. “Suddenly I found I could express all that I was holding inside, and seeing how my feelings influenced my photography made me almost appreciate what I’d been going though.”
Those images and, by default, the complexity of human emotion that inspired them, has earned Albi a following of more than 250,000 on Instagram, and 55,000 on Facebook. Not bad for someone whose degree is in Medical Biotechnology.
Albi’s kit is streamlined, with a Nikon D810 and three prime lenses (35mm, 50mm, and 85mm) and improvised tools like tissues, kitchen utensils, and sheets of paper for manipulating light, shadow, and framing. His editing process is similarly straightforward: “I catalog and edit the raw file in Adobe Lightroom, just for basic adjustments like lights and shadows recover, if need. Detailed work and color toning is totally done in Adobe Photoshop, and usually takes 10 to 20 minutes per image.”
His light touch is by design; Albi trains his lens on those whom he feels have an extraordinary ability to transmit emotions to the viewer. In one image, a pale figure floats, half-submerged with her body loosely wrapped with rope, with her face turned to the sky, and camera, above. The water is not the tropical azure fodder for easy likes that proliferates on Instagram, but an inky, leaf-speckled pond sunk in a gloomy forest. The scene is deeply reminiscent of famous paintings depicting Shakespeare’s tragic Ophelia as well as classic portrayals of saints and martyrs, but free from demanding a definite interpretation. Albi favors captions of as few words as possible, preferring to “let the pictures talk”; this photo is simply titled “Bonds.”
Although Albi has photographed an enviable variety of beauties, he admits to AdoramaTV that his dream subjects are Natalie Portman and Tilda Swinton, two actresses who have influenced his work through their own, through atmospheric films and editorials that showcase the depths of emotions through conflicted characters. Down the same line, Albi’s dream setting for a shoot, however fantastical, would be the surface of the moon. Failing the ability to easily hop in a spaceship with a few friends, Albi finds himself returning to Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, for the “unique, extraterrestrial look of the environment and the feeling of calm and warm loneliness it transmits,” themes which reappear in his photographs.
For travelers and photographers hoping to develop a signature style fueled by a desire to share what most makes them happy, as Albi has done, he recommends looking to your friends. “Friendship is an important element in my personal works. Always try to get to know a person before picking up the camera, and always be kind. This connection may be the thing that helps you, and them, more than you realize.”
