First I discovered her photographs: they spoke to me about the hidden corners of the human soul that revealed themselves through the shapes and structures of natural patterns.

Then the texts accompanying her series followed, full of simple but profound words, smelling of  the damp moss of places we make inaccessible that should instead emerge into the light; then I met Alma Bibolotti in her white, noisy and beautiful Bari.

An extrovert, a traveller, with an inexhaustible energy, with a very rich inner life, sensitive and capable of finding the infinite in details.

This article focuses on her photography, trying to brighten up some fragments of beauty that deserves to be admired. Alma was born in Bari, in southern Italy, and at the age of fifteen her uncle gave her a Pentax Spotmatic that had a broken expometer; Alma began to photograph everything but always with a special predisposition for natural elements: herbs, flowers, water.  In photography she finds the means to overcome her introversion by telling what her gaze rests on, which allows her to express her way of ‘looking’ at life. The following year, the photographic development and printing course organized by her school literally changed her life. Alma was fascinated by the alchemical dimension of the photographic process: seeing how light emerges from darkness, the slow appearance of the image had something ‘magical’ in it, a generative energy; thus she learned to master the darkroom techniques that allowed her to control the evocative dimension and expressive tension of the final image as it was created.

Even today, many years later and after having switched to digital photography, Alma’s B&W photos still clearly show her ability to master the developing and printing process: a process that focuses above all on exalting the structure of the photographed subjects  and accentuating the shapes, through a rigorous contrast work applied to the ‘micro-areas’ of the image (the teachings of Ansel Adams are precious in this respect). Alma also uses toning as a tool to convey her vision of what she photographs, through the reflection of her being and the feelings of the moment. In addition to this, it is the use of specific plug-ins that allows her to simulate the look of old emulsion films. This amplifies the potential that the digital laboratory offers, Alma considers it as the possibility of choosing between the path that often leads today to stereotyped images representing what one looks at, or trying to express her own inner vision and point of view.

Returning to Alma Bibolotti’s photographic story, it must be said that after several years in which she photographed a lot but did not show her creations to the public, a very dear friend of hers organised an appointment with an important gallerist in Venice (Ikona Gallery) for an analysis of her portfolio, thus facilitating the setting of her passion in the world. The gallerist encouraged Alma to continue, suggesting her to stop looking at what ‘other photographers’ do, to find her own narrative syntax, her own authorial language. From then on, Alma decreased the amount of photos she took in order to focus her gaze on the aspects of reality that had always attracted her: natural forms associated with elements such as water, minerals, vegetal. Thus transforming her objects of contemplation into subjects of representation, always bearing in mind that according to her, photography is a language that should not represent reality, but rather ‘reveal’ our inner world, what ‘resonates’ with our desires, or even with what is submerged in our unconscious. For this reason, Alma believes that her photography is one that, as times passes through the lens of melancholy,  reveals the traces of a language hidden in the folds of ‘generating’ Nature.

In short, at a time when we are literally inundated with ‘beautiful’ images, when everyone or almost everybody takes and publishes photos, often in the frantic search for visibility and ‘consensus’, it is essential that in the act of photographing we turn our gaze inward and that photography manages to give voice to our emotions, our experiences, to convey profound messages about our existence. Quoting the great master Ansel Adams ‘You bring in the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.’

Besides photography, Alma has at least two other artistic passions: music and woodworking. The latter stems from the fact that her father passionately restored antique weapons: from an early age Alma was attracted to this art and especially to walnut and cherry wood; she says that wood speaks to her when she works on it. Working with wood and  manual dexterity require to do so, they have always conveyed calmness to her and it is in the same way  Alma patiently works on images when she plunges herself in her digital lab.

When I asked her to tell me about the flow that normally follows the creation of  a new photographic work , I saw in her gaze the typical expression saying: ‘there it is, this question had to come!’ and almost resignedly she tried to find a logic to explain something  that is actually unstructured. There comes a time when she becomes interested in a certain aspect and decides to tell about it. Normally this idea springs from an almost unconscious sedimentation of thoughts that arise from viewing the photographs she has in her archive,  subjects that fully reflect those natural aspects  she loves. From this emotional settling, based on the observation of her images, a kind of metamorphosis is triggered in a way that, through the forms enclosed in the photographed subjects, reveal  her emotions and thoughts so that, as they take shape in her mind, become a series that Alma decides to realise using the images that have set off this process.

Alma feels that water is the element in which her body expresses itself at its best, where she feels at ease, giving her calm and balance. And it is precisely this very intimate relationship that she lives with water that Alma wanted to portray, photographing it from the inside, almost from the perspective of a marine being, but not too much… The same friend who took her to the art gallery in Venice gave her an underwater camera that allowed Alma to get the perspective she wanted. Thus the ‘Maredentro’ series was created.

From a technical point of view, Alma is far removed from those who worry too much about technique and equipment because many people today think that good photography is achieved with the latest generation of cameras. She shoots with a Lumix LX100 with a Leica 10.9-34.0mm f/1.7-2.8 lens and with a Nikon D3000 equipped with an excellent Nikkor macro lens.

She only uses social media to keep in touch with other photographers and artists she gets to know, some of whom (as in my case) she manages to meet in person and establish a friendship with. Alma also uses social media to show her creations, but without being pestered by likes. In fact, the search for likes is seen by her as a factor that often risks influencing the way she photographs herself.

What is your idea about artificial intelligence in photography? Alma thinks that AI is a further tool in the hands of photographers to improve their ability to express an intention; just as it was done in the darkroom or with PHP. If I want to express my voice through creation, if the language of art must be free, then AI cannot be condemned a priori, because by that same criterion, we should demonise Fontana’s cuts, Warhol’s serial acrylics or digital photography itself. But art does not go backwards. I think that AI can be considered as another tool at one’s disposal, always and when one does not use it to surprise or to create beauty for its own sake; instead, if one uses it to add something personal to what one already has or to give substance to a concept, to a vision of something one has in mind, then it can add potential and enrich the ‘palette’ of tools that help an artist express his or her creativity. It is a question of intentionality. Regardless of this, what Alma hopes will not happen is that AI deprives us of the magic that comes from ‘writing with light’, and the relationship that is established between the photographer and the object of  contemplation. ‘Relationship’ is the key word: when we photograph, we relate to the light that illuminates the world and to the photographed subjects, which generate communication. It is an intense emotional moment that is in danger of vanishing when photographic subjects are created on the computer.

Photographing means to wake up early in the morning to catch a certain colour in the sky, it is going to Normandy in July to see the flax fields, it is the emotion one feels when contemplating the nuances of the “blue hour”, it is in the ‘unrepeatable’ moments, in the memory of them, of those people, those fragments of life.

In the human,  therefore in the gaze of each one of us, there is something that photography can enhance, and it is imperfection, the decaying beauty that can be summed up in what  Japanese  people call ‘Wabi-Sabi’, i.e. the acceptance of the transience of things and of life itself. For Alma, the quest for completeness and perfection that characterises part of today’s photographic production is precisely the opposite of  poetry that is  the act of photographing which, definetly, doesn’ t represent beauty,  but  succeeds, through images, in expressing our souls, in recounting our fragilities, made up of light and shadows.