I have no problems to say that since three years I am attending a mental health center, as patient, where every week I meet wonderful people.
They are patients too. And they are teaching me to observe the world around me in different way. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is banal, small affairs are as important as serious choices .
And this concept is valid for people too.So I thought to give meaning to the photographs of mine, also trying to dig up why I like so much to take pictures to the people. And I discovered that usually I photograph what I would have liked to be. Nothing special, just a bit more coherent, I wish I had been more in love, braver, more politically engaged, more athletic, an uninhibited person, and I discover all of this just now.
“Common People” is the summary of life that I have not experienced fully, but without regret, because now I know that the ordinary people not exist. Somehow, each of us is a special person. Even if the faces lost in the infinitely small area of a photographic image, each of the people I photographed remains the only one. I go around my city, Rome, with my camera, looking for the right situation for a magical shot, but most of the time the photographs I take home are weak. It rarely happens that what I have framed, the person in the viewfinder, the whole scene, really expresses what I imagined to capture. The mood of the moment is there, impressed forever on the memory card. And it’s a magical thing because basically, I photograph common people.By contradiction, “Common People” is also a way to satisfy the visual need that would not need captions or a text (like this) to define its meaning. I am convinced that the photographs (all the photographs) do not attribute tangible meanings to the texts, just as the texts do not attribute them to the photographs that illustrate them.This project is like a family album that everyone can browse bearing in mind that it is not true that the photographs have the same meaning of the things to which they are taken and that the meaning could change over time.In the moment of maximum diffusion of photography, which has now become mass activity, or, better said, mass hysteria, I am trying to propose a photograph that is not information, nor publicity, no repetition, that is not imitation or faithful reproduction , which is not the mirror of the soul, nor exhibition, which is not counter-information, which is not a product or a consumption.
“Common People” is not revolution. It is my Photography.
About Elio Cremi
Elio Cremi was born in Rome many years ago and for him it would have been better to be born a few years later, but you can not have everything from life. He started taking pictures at 19, when I bought an Olympus OM-1 camera and then everything needed for black-and-white development and printing. He attended courses, where I learned the basics of technique and photographic composition. Currently he is involved in social photography as a freelancer, but for work he is a photographer of events, shows and ceremonies and web designers. [Official Website]
