Critique by Paola Riccardi
For a number of years, the Tuscan landscape has acted as a virtual canvas for photographer Sandro Santioli, and through it, he has offered up a plethora of vibrant, sweeping views of his awe-inspiring birthplace, later focusing his attention on similar themes in nearby France, and further afield in locations including China, Brazil, the Hawaiian archipelago, California and Iceland.
At one stage of his career, however – it might be called a watershed moment – he felt the urge to widen his scope, both figuratively and literally, and express his vision through aerial photography. Embarking on this new phase opened the door for the photographer to harness the possibilities of a radically different technique, and one which allowed him to inject fresh vigour into his lifelong quest: chasing the evasive ideal of ‘perfect’ composition, the predominant element found across his entire body of work.
Historically, the roots of aerial photography can be traced back to near the origin of photography itself. Nadar, the renowned and celebrated 19th century portraitist, with boundless courage (and needing to overcome a fair few practical obstacles in the process), braved the skies above Paris in a hot-air balloon in an attempt to capture a slightly more unusual view of the city. His feat was a runaway success and, as a result, his work put him miles ahead – or you could say above – his contemporaries.
In the modern era, among the waves of standout aerial photographers that have mastered the art, two of the more illustrious practitioners stand out: the Swiss maestro Georg Gerster and the visionary Frenchman Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Each managed to traverse the globe in its entirety, creating a vast archive of images and natural history records that are as unique as they are detailed.
Both harboured a keen sense of intuition in addition to their uncanny ability to spot, decipher and interpret topographical patterns. As a result, their combined bodies of work represent valuable contributions towards the study of anthropology and piecing together the human story.
In the space of a few short years, geographical archives and stock image libraries alike have become filled with aerial images, chiefly since the wide availability of digital photography tools and techniques removes much of the difficulty involved in achieving consistently excellent results.
Nowadays, airborne drones are capable of effortlessly shooting in locations that aircraft pilots would find difficult or impossible to even access. Despite this, however, the art of aerial photography continues to play quite an important role in the development of many visual artists, acting as an outlet for artistic research and discovery.
Santioli takes his cue directly from here, putting together the body of work revealed in his portfolio Aerial Views. Between its covers, we find that the author observes the terrain below with a raven’s eye, putting his focus to work in uncovering the hidden dynamic that exists between the elements that comprise the landscape.
A strikingly keen amount of emphasis is placed on lines, composition, natural features, volume and viewing angles, all while illustrating how to manipulate color-infused backgrounds to give rise to entirely unexpected forms.
While in ‘aerial observation’ mode, Santioli is able to create quite abstract compositions that seem to practically re-organise otherwise disparate features of the landscape, creating one that places the emphasis on aesthetics.
Linguistically, the photographer seems to deliberately employ a technique that could be referred to as ‘selective vision’.
For instance, the viewer will note the inclusion of tight geometric lines combined with objects rendered momentarily two-dimensional owing to the nature of aerial photography.
The by-product of this superimposition of elements is that the viewer’s attention is drawn precisely to a pre-determined area of the frame. Part of Santioli’s stylistic toolkit involves saturating color in order to graphically emphasize a given composition.
Another hallmark of this photographer’s technique is to quite intelligently play with the paradoxical notions of ‘far off’ and ‘tiny’ inherent in the aerial genre, creating views that offer no obvious sense of scale or proportion.
His method can be described as one of creating a ‘sketch’ of the landscape, throwing in a liberal dash of his personal interpretation, reformulating the entire scene and re-presenting it to the viewer.
Speaking from his perspective as a photographer, he states, “ My photography is also my way of perceiving reality, of perceiving life itself. I’m not into fads or trends. My work is born from a craving to satisfy a personal hunger.”
The two bodies of work, Aerial View and Urbanscapes, resemble each other in many ways and feature several related themes.
Leafing through both volumes will put forward numerous viewing angles and shooting distances employed by the photographer. Additionally, in both the reader will notice a distinct visual approach that offers up quite abstract geometric forms, each time with a defined pattern.
When looking at this aerial work, the sensation felt by the viewer is often one of hurtling towards the landscape – you are virtually catapulted headlong into each image. In parallel with the close-up crops offered in Urbanscapes, the reader finds himself utterly immersed in the image.
In the same way that these sweeping tracts of land in Aerial View are seemingly able to return the landscape to its original form in a recomposed and geometretized manner, we find that in Urbanscapes, buildings, streets and urban spaces are re-drawn, rejigged and re-presented, as if to underline the hypothesis that ‘each one of us perceives our very own notion of reality in a way that is as distinct as it is unique’.
This effectively makes a strong case for continuing to create open-ended, probing art that can stimulate wide-ranging interpretation from any given audience.
Present throughout Santioli’s photography is a distinct style that connects all of his work irrespective of genre.
Starting from what we have seen of his work depicting the majestic Tuscan countryside, he has put together a stunning assortment of imagery, spanning images of the city, nature and even includes a collection of extremely elegant nudes.
Even when switching genres and subjects entirely he is able to faithfully maintain a consistent dialogue throughout as far as forms, clarity of lines and contours are concerned, including deep, highly saturated color that in turn becomes an expressive and narrative-inducing medium.
Over a long career straddling various categories of photography, Santioli has been able to successfully showcase his technical prowess while managing to consistently maintain a trademark style and approach to creativity.