Jacopo Pergameno
Jacopo, please introduce yourself:
I am Jacopo, an Italian Photographer & Director based in Milan and Rome.
Portrait
#1 Your career spans art direction, photography, and video. How has your creative journey evolved to encompass these disciplines?
I began my journey as a photographer, studying at a photography school in Rome from 2008 to 2011, then I went to live in London for a short period and I immediately realized that I needed a quieter place to develop my photography and personal research projects, which at the time was the only thing I had any interest in. I have always thought that "long term projects" intended for the production of photographic books or fanzines and exhibitions in galleries and museums were the maximum expression in terms of language for a photographer. And that's something I still think about today. The approach to video came a few years later when I arrived in Milan I realized that I wanted to experiment with something new with a other medium than photography. The world of fashion, in this sense, was ideal for being able to create very stimulating and creatively free projects, but at the same time very immediate in the creation process.
I therefore chose to follow photography and video direction in two very distant directions, on the one hand research photography on very personal themes that I have no urgency to publish before due time and on the other video direction in which each project is a experience of profound creative stress in which I constantly step out of my comfort zone and am asked to produce in a very short time a product that is both commercial and artistic.
In both cases, after many years I realized that my eye had its own creative direction that was often similar in these two worlds. Each creative reflects in his works what his personal experience has experienced unconsciously but through direct experiences throughout his life.
My sensitivity, the way I look at the world and all the culture I feed on is already inside my images.
Right now what I'm doing is finding an aesthetic common thread that can finally unite these two realities. Looking at the works I have done and the ones I am working on, as a single large set of images under the same creative vision.
“ Your Book Is Not Here ” - Personal project 2012-2024
#2 As an Italian creative, how does your culture influence your visual work? Where are you currently based, and how does that environment shape your projects?
Being born and raised in Rome certainly influenced my way of seeing things a lot. In some way, however, I have always been fascinated by what could be more distant and exotic culturally. When I did graffiti for years as a young man, I was dragged into that world by the fascination I felt with the American hip hop subculture, by the fascination with the aesthetics of urban decay that permeated from the 90s. Almost always, therefore, I think I felt the need to chasing a different aesthetic than I was into. Rome is certainly one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but the aesthetics and art it hosts are so dominant that in some way it becomes a cage from which it is very difficult to break away to embark on a freer aesthetic path.
Authors like Rinko Kawauchi, William Eggleston, Nobuyochi Araki have slowly questioned, in different ways, my origins as a Roman author. Perhaps this is also why years later I chose to live in Milan. There the historical presence of the city is less overwhelming and one can open up more easily to contamination from abroad, like a small forum from which one can spy on the world.
#3 In fashion, you often highlight interesting locations. How does the space / environment in your photography shape the narrative?
The language of my videos, as well as their narration, is always strongly influenced by the landscape.
I have always felt uncomfortable working with neutral backdrops where the only subject was the human one. For me, the scenario in which a model moves is both the place and the main subject of the action. If it is true that the space surrounding a particular subject is as if it were its stage, I have the feeling that in my videos this space is actually the soul of the video together with the product being advertised.
Commercial Projects : Intimissimi Fashion Corsetry Campaign 2023 /
Pianegonda Jewelery 2022
#4 What can you share about your current project, and how does it fit into your broader creative vision?
At the moment I am working on a photographic project that starts from a personal event and that over the last 12 years I have tried to develop so that it was as universal as possible, drawing on both diary photography and my commercial archive. It is a work that deals with the theme of separation, but also love and more generally memory.
#5 You’re working on a photobook. What’s the concept, and what has this project taught you about your craft?
I am developing many potential developments of the work, and this allows me to roam freely and explore the various possibilities of editing and using the materials. But this is something I also do in video editing when I study contemporary languages for many hours for my research.
Regardless of where this project ends up, be it a book or an exhibition or something else, I believe that reflecting on medium and long-term photography is very important today to recover its profound value. Today photography is for the use and consumption of social networks and mass consumerism, we see it used more and more as a means to express ourselves or sell something, but in an increasingly less conscious way. Working on a photographic project of this kind for me means thinking about photography in terms of memory and as a great conveyor of signifiers, which reaches the public as a work open to interpretation and open dialogue with one's own experience.
“ Your Book Is Not Here ” - Personal project 2012 - 2024
#6 What advice would you offer young creatives starting out in photography or art direction?
It's difficult to be able to give really useful advice to the new generations at this time. The speed with which the media and the way we communicate through them are changing is really fast. Everything seems to be very fluid and we have less and less time to deeply understand the means we have in our hands to communicate and be creative.
Perhaps this is why I believe it is increasingly important not to stop at the first possibility we encounter as a creative solution, but to dig deeper, waiting and trying to read ourselves in a more profound way. Getting out of our comfort zone, traveling and connecting with others in a real way and having profound human experiences is the basis, together with the visual culture of films, art and music, if you want to experience the creative process.
The world will always be rapidly evolving, but images will always have the great capacity to guard very deep intrinsic secrets that we will be able to use and convey if we have a strong awareness. This is why photography, regardless of its use, will be an incredibly long-lived art. Its signifiers are there waiting for us, we just have to be ready and grasp them
Commercial Project: Maison Co-go 2024
#7 How do you approach organizing and managing multiple creative projects?
My approach is often very unorganized and very confusing and depends a lot on the type of work I focus on. If I have to design a video work for Fashion, in reality everything is so fast and stressful that I spend many hours researching images and music to build a visual imagery to propose to the client.
While for photographic projects it is completely the opposite; for those I need time and calm, which are two important allies to be more aware of what I want.
In both cases, since I'm terribly disorganized and don't multitask much, I help myself a lot with lists and notes that I always carry with me!
#8 How does your environment influence your work?
There isn't a specific place, but there is a practice that I feel I need. That is, changing places often to change my point of view. Life often leads us to always see things and places from the same angle, and in the long run this becomes a limit to our visual freedom and imagination. Sometimes when I play chess I happen to turn the board around halfway through a game to change perspective and read my tactics from another angle. This is the ideal example to explain this process. It is not the place itself that is important, but the eyes with which we look at it and the different angles from which we observe them.
“ Your Book Is Not Here ” - Personal project, 2012 - 2024
#9 Three things that inspire you at the moment:
Contemporary Dance
People from The Gen Z
My girlfriend
#10 What do you currently read, watch, listen to?
I was recently in NY and read a lot of Paul Auster, I know it's corny but I love his writing.
I'm listening to a lot of new music for me ranging from singer-songwriter to electronic (Daniela Pes, Melanie de Biasio, C'mon Tigre!) but it's only the last week, then I'll probably go back to Jazz and Hip Hop.
About movies, I'm going to the cinema as much as possible, unplugging the phone and isolating myself for a few hours completely concentrated on an author's work is something very precious today. TV series have tired me, I don't feel I need them.
“ Your Book Is Not Here ” - Personal project, 2012 - 2024
Links
vimeo: jacopopergameno
Instagram: jacopo_pergameno
Photo Credits: ©Jacopo Pergameno
Interview by Susanne Oberhollenzer
