Adam D'Auria is a Fine Art photographer and digital artist who creates stories with a special atmosphere, sequences of a timeless world in a black and white approach. "In fine art photography, I am free to compose a photo as I have seen it in my mind's eye." he says, and his dark and moody landscapes are introspective visual stories full of emotion and melancholy into which the viewer is invited to participate.
Where others see only a shadow on the wall, Adam D'Auria sees guidelines, perspectives and contrasts. When he gets bored of taking a classic street shot, he experiments with creative techniques using expired film, vintage lenses or uses vaseline on the lens because “the only limit in fine art photography is your own imagination”.
Hello, Adam,
First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the time to tell us about you and your work in this interview.
To begin, where are you from? Please tell us about yourself and your passions.
Hello, first of all, I would like to thank you, Elena, for inviting me to this interview. The occasion to express my thoughts in this great community full of photography masters is a great joy and a privilege for me! My name is Adam D’Auria, I live in Germany since 1988 and was born in Poland in 1979. My surname is Italian but that's only because I married an Italian girl. I work full-time in a retirement home. Occasionally I work as a wedding photographer. Aside from photography, I enjoy movies and music. I am a big admirer of the movies of Stanley Kubrick, Werner Herzog, and Roman Polanski. Listening to music is also a very important and inspiring part of my life. I am not really into mainstream music or film, I rather like art that is complex, unique, and moody. I like melancholic art and I assume that one can tell by looking at my photos.
How did you get caught up in the magic of photography? How did this journey start?
The urge to express myself as an artist has always been there. I tried drawings and oil paintings from my early days as a child and teenager. Both never really suited me although I always felt the urge to create worlds from my imagination. Photography was the first thing that really worked well for me. I am not sure why. But I can tell that there are many aspects that I enjoy about photography. In street photography i. e., I like the idea of capturing unique moments. It’s like freezing time. Also, it’s interesting that a street photographer is trying to control or at least work with coincidences. It’s human nature to want to control the chaos they are in. So I guess I am just looking for order or control in a chaotic world.
My dark moody landscape photography is more about an emotional approach to photography. Looking at one of those photos is like taking a glimpse into my soul. Bright and loud pop culture was never something that could raise attention in me. Instead, I always had a passion for the dark and melancholic arts. This definitely shaped the way I do my own art.
And sometimes I just enjoy doing photography for the sake of itself. It’s a big pleasure to collect classic cameras and to see what they are capable of.
Your visual stories seem timeless, whether they take you into the heart of the forest, on a walk along a road, or in the middle of the city, they create a special atmosphere. What do you intend to convey through your artwork?
I once had a chat with a nice guy that was looking at one of my photos during an exposition of my works. He looked closely at the silhouette of a human being that seemed to be disappearing into the forest. And he asked me: “Who is that silhouette on this photo?” And I replied to him: “Well, that’s you, every time you look at that photo!” He was confused at first, but then he nodded and smiled, so I guess he accepted that as an answer. But actually, I did not tell him the truth. That human element that I usually have in my photos, regardless of whether that’s in a forest or in an urban environment, is actually always a part of me that I am showing. It’s like a glimpse of my soul. I think we live in a very complex and diffuse world and sometimes I find it hard to understand why some things are happening. Why do humans behave as they do? We seem powerless to fix our conflicts and issues. So with my images, I try to express my own confusion about the complexity of a world that is diffused and displays itself in countless shades of grey instead of simple black and white.
How do you find the inspiration for your visual stories?
That really depends. Sometimes I see a nice scene in a movie that inspires me to take my camera and try to achieve a similar scene. Watching movies from cinematic masters like Andrei Tarkowski or Akira Kurosawa is always a huge inspiration. Sometimes I listen to the lyrics of my favourite music. Those lyrics sometimes create a vision of a motif that I want to transpose into a photo.
Also, there are a few great photography communities that I participate in, especially 100ASA and 1x.com. The sheer amount of high-quality photographers is an important motivation for me. And it’s also a reminder to get my feet back on the ground if I should ever believe that I am a photography genius myself.
In the absence of words, visual poetry creates a much more dynamic and interpretive interaction between the author and the viewer. What do you think, is visual poetry easier to convey and feel in black and white?
In my case, absolutely. I want to create images that are simple, reduced, and calm. They are perfect when they evoke emotions. I believe colours are distracting from what I want to convey. Colours are not important, but emotions are. So I prefer to lead the watcher’s eye to the core element of my image using shadows, lights, and contrasts. Most of the time I want to convey a melancholic mood with my images. That’s why bright colours would not fit. I occasionally do colour photography in landscapes or where colour information is crucial to understand the image. But that has become a very rare occasion.
I know you're always trying to experiment when you take photos. What is your artistic journey, techniques, and theme that you have experimented with so far?
Everything started with a plastic DIY-Camera Kit. It’s called “Recesky TLR” and I think you can still buy it today. That’s a very cheap and simple TLR Camera with one shutter speed and a plastic lens. You must build it yourself. I used some expired 35mm film and started to do photos of my cat. It was great fun despite the results being terrible. The film is always a great starting point if you want to try experimental photography. The biggest fun I ever had was working with a cheap used Minolta 404SI with a controlled slap of Vaseline on the lens. It was on a rainy day and the experience has been incredible. One of the images of that day made it to the elite gallery at 100ASA. I am very proud of that!
Lately, I’ve been into cheap lenses like the Fujian 35mm C-Mount and classic digital cameras like the Panasonic L1. The blur of the Fujian lens is unreal. It’s like a lens that was made for me. It’s actually terrible by all means, but it is perfect for my dark and moody landscape photography. Several images made with this lens were awarded at 1x.com or are in the Elite Gallery here at 100ASA. The next thing I want to experiment with is a used Lensbaby tilt-shift lens for the abandoned 4/3 mount. And also there is a whole new technology: Artificial Intelligence. Photos created with a text prompt. Like DALL-E, Midjourney, etc. Is it possible to create a photograph without using a camera? You type in a vision of a motif into a text prompt of an AI. And it creates an image for you. I have already tried it and I am amazed! But is this still photography? I have not decided about that yet so I am putting that idea on hold.
Please share with us what photographic equipment you use and what is the process of creation of your works.
I have two approaches to my photography: I appreciate the possibilities of modern high-end cameras when I need them for my professional work. So I have several upper-end Sony full-frame cameras and lenses.
But for my work as an artist, I prefer mid- to low-end cameras of different brands. The m43-mount suits my work as a street photographer best. Most m43 Cameras are reasonably priced, discrete, fast, and reliable. That’s perfect for taking candid pictures. Also, you can adapt almost everything on that mount so you can experiment with all sorts of lenses.
Also, it’s great fun to overcome the limitations of classic cameras. A camera like the Panasonic L1 is hopeless compared to a modern camera, even to a modern smartphone. But on the other hand, if I manage to overcome all the limitations and squeeze at least one great image out of it, I feel such deep joy and pride so everything is amended. My latest camera is a used Konica Minolta Dimage A2 from a flea market and I can already tell that it’s awfully slow. But I cannot wait to use it!
With regard to software, I always take pictures in RAW and edit them in Adobe Software and the Nik Collection (especially Silver Efex).
Please share with us your favorite photographers you admire and how did they influence your photographic journey?
It’s Paulo Abrantes. His work changed my approach to photography. Before I discovered his work, I was doing all sorts of nice sunset landscape photos. Everyone in my family liked them and I enjoyed doing them a lot. But it was my discovery of the photos of Paulo Abrantes that showed me that there is much more to photography than just nice sunset landscapes. His photos have a soul, a meaning, a deeper sense that makes the viewer dive into the moment he captured with his camera. I have discovered many highly inspiring photographers since that, like Hans-Wolfgang Hawerkamp, Hengki Lee, Phil Penman, Olga Karlovac, and Teruhiko Tsuchida, to name a few (there are many more!), but it is definitely Paulo Abrantes’ work that made me rethink the way I was doing photography.
Which of your own photographs do you prefer and why? Please tell us the story behind it.
I am not sure if I have done such a photo yet. Of course, I have my favourite photographs that I have created over the past years. Yet it is very important to me to grow and evolve as an artist. I could show you my favourite picture but I might not be so proud of it anymore in a few years’ time. For example, I was very proud of my work at the beginning of my photographic journey but today I would not even bother to take the images I took at the time. Not liking your old images is a good sign that you keep evolving and I would like to keep it that way!
Please choose one of your favorite photographs of all time and tell us why you nominated it.
That’s easy. I have seen many outstanding and inspiring photographs after that, but “Soon After Silence” from Paulo Abrantes is the first photo I have seen from him and that photograph changed my approach to photography completely. Look at the blur. Or the use of negative space. The perfect use of contrast. It’s incredible. It’s frightening yet beautiful. This photo made my nice sunset photos meaningless. And I really loved to do nice sunsets. It was the starting point of where I am now as an artist.
How do you imagine the evolution of your artistic work and your figure as an artist in the future?
This is something I cannot predict. I cannot even say what I want to do next. What I can definitely say is that I believe that for me there is no end to evolving as an artist. We live in a world that is constantly changing. Change is the only constant in this world. So I will probably change with it. But I cannot say which direction I will take. The only thing I can say for sure is that I do not want to do the same photo over and over again. It’s great to have a recognizable style, and an artistic language, but I want to make sure that it won’t develop into a creative dead end. I am open to everything and I am not making plans. There is a quote from John Lennon that perfectly describes my attitude: “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans”.
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