“Instinct and emotion is fifty percent. The other fifty percent is planning,” says Simone Bramante, a professional photographer and native of Bologna, Italy. You may already be familiar with his work; Bramante is currently shooting a campaign with Netflix to promote their acclaimed series, “Narcos,” and has crafted images for brands like San Pellegrino, Barilla, Bombay Sapphire, and Cartier.
It’s tempting to think of Bramante as a talent relatively freshly discovered thanks to the power of Instagram. He boasts a following of more than 875,000 on the app, and his images frequently follow the formula for winning likes: solo figures centered in the foreground, humbled by grand expanses of nature or striking architecture before them. The truth is that Bramante got his start however almost twenty years ago, when film cameras were still king and processing his black and white portraits meant time in a dark room. Luckily he was open to change, and has become a prolific user of Instagram, admitting that he finds immense value in the feedback from his followers. “I trust them,” he tells AdoramaTV. “They help me to think about the changes in my photography in the last years.”
For street photography, Bramante relies on a Leica Q, and switches to a Leica SL for portraits and still shots. His gear pack also includes a Canon EOS 5D Mark III, for its reliability in low temperature conditions, something he had plenty time to test during his participation last year in a several week segment of a circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle. The voyage, with Quark Expeditions aboard the iconic Soviet icebreaker “Kapitan Khlebnikov,” was headed by Colonel Chris Hadfield, former astronaut and the first Canadian to walk in space. Dubbed “Generator Arctic,” Hadfield’s team of scientists and influential creatives, Bramante included, aimed to “create a multimedia imprint of a rare time and space, seen through eyes who have never been exposed to it before.” The resulting video series is available on YouTube, and Bramante’s images went on display this summer at Leica’s Milan store.
For photographers traveling to Italy, he is eager to give local advice: “I recommend not just the postcard places like Venice or Florence or Rome or Cinqueterre. I’m always amazed with the small towns, those that are not famous and not touristic.” Still, he does have a few pleasant words for Venice, La Serenissima, for those who simply cannot leave it off an itinerary: “There is something very elegant and special when the darkness is coming. I feel Venice is a labyrinth. So to me Venice is when the artificial lights are on and the sky is very blue, there is something to be discovered, even though Venice seems like everything is discovered.”
Lest anyone confuse his wide experience and variety of opportunities for a relaxed life, Bramante has some words: “It’s not easy in Italy being a photographer. You have to pay a huge amount of taxes, around sixty percent. Personally, I think I’m lucky because I do what I want. It’s hard to find a reason why I do what I do. I follow my instinct, and I only do work I care about. I have just one life and I want to push my creativity to the limit.”
YOLO, right? Well, Bramante’s carpe diem approach only developed when he became a father, saying that it was then he “understood how fast is life.” He admits an envy for the young travelers and photographers he meets, who “consume the entire time to express themselves,” an impression best explained as spending your most creative, active years in the world, looking outward, rather than locked to a singular goal, looking inward.
His images reflect this, often depicting subjects moving away from the camera, taking initial steps towards the horizon. “The most important subject to me is an action, or an emotion, made by a human subject interacting with a natural landscape,” he shares with AdoramaTV. In one recent image of his son at Italy’s Lago di Tovel, Bramante depicts him wading out, head held high and his small movements rippling in the calm surface. The caption is simple, beautiful, and all optimism: “Being a daddy is the best adventure I didn’t expect to live. Go my boy, this planet is yours.”
