Diego Bardone is a 52 year old street photographer based in Milan. His photographic passion ignited when he was about 25, he worked for an Italian newspaper for a few years, then life brought him “somewhere else” though his passion never died, he had not been on the streets in a very long time (more than 20 years).

In his thoughts there is nothing better than being in front of a B&W photograph: you can’t run away, you may close your eyes but in the end, be sure it won’t disappear like an image on a screen and you just have to look at it. Some black, some white and in the middle a never ending grey scale…that’s life, that’s the way to keep our memory for those coming next.

In his eyes there’s the lesson of humanist post-war French photographers: Doisneau, Boubat, Izis are those he likes most of all but even Bresson and Erwitt are a big source of inspiration. He loves the gentle way they depicted their world. A world that is basically romantic, funny and sometimes melancholic, in a few words it’s all about the people. Human beings are the centre of his universe. He says that he shoots because it makes him happy and free, he basically shoots toremember and hopefully to not be forgotten, building up a daily diary, a tribute to those who, often unaware actors, he has the good fortune to meet during his lonely walk in Milan. It’s like If he sees himself in a sort of virtual mirror: he is every single one of them, they are his wandering cheerfulness becoming photographs. His portraits are true stories, full of tales and sentiment: he takes pictures on the streets of Milan but his lenses lose all geographical connotation to become a place of universal recovery. We could be in Paris or Hong Kong or anywhere: what Bardone focuses on is the street life of a city, who knows if one day the capital of the world, told through stolen feelings, unpredictable coincidences and represented through real views but that then appear surreal as only a fairy tale can be. His favourite quote, is a quote by Abbas, more or less it says: “Get a good pair of walking shoes and fall in love.” Isn’t wonderful?”.

Here Bardone shows us a selection of “random” street shots and two selection taken from his series “Faceless, an ode to privacy laws” and  “Freedom begins with irony”. The faceless series was born to question the restrictions about the privacy laws and their implications for candid shooting. As usual, the “ironic” side has a big relevance, cause Bardone is a very happy guy when holding a camera in his hands: the world is so full of misery, he just wants to portrait the other side of the coin. The last photo of this portfolio shows us without any doubt who Bardone is: “Because it makes me happy” and it could not be otherwise. [Official Website]