Music, Love, & Abstraction with Costanza Damiani
Name, age, where are you from, what format do you like using, what are you currently working on (if you are)?
My name is Costanza, I’m 25, and I’m from Rome, Italy. I mainly shoot on film— medium format and 35mm. Film is especially important to me because it allows me to connect with the material and tactile side of photography. It makes me feel like I’m holding in my hands what my eyes see and what my mind craves to capture, transform, and keep with me for as long as I want.
What about your surroundings/environments and upbringing interested you?
I grew up surrounded by music, thanks to my parents. I played the violin and guitar since I was a kid, and that profoundly shaped the way I feel emotions and interact with people. I’m sensitive to their sound in the same way I learned to be sensitive during an instrument’s interplay.
By playing music, especially ensemble music, I had to listen carefully to what was happening around me. A piece works well when everyone listens to each other. The most beautiful thing about playing with others is catching their gaze while speaking this other language—feeling their energy without words but through sound. I grew up seeing personal creative expression as play and connection, and that still nourishes my photography today in the way I feel the subjects I portray and capture their essence.
When was the first time you met photography? How did you feel when you met it?
I met photography for the first time almost by accident while I was desperately searching for my place in the world. Photos had always been part of my life growing up, but it took me a while to realize that it was my primary tool of expression. It’s a travel companion that helps shape the narration my mind is living. And in my mind that narration, among other things, is extremely colorful.
Tell us about current projects you have been working on (could be any, or just work you have been doing in general). Is this story inspired by personal reasons, or others? What are you most excited about in these projects?
In the past year, I’ve been focusing specifically on emotional connections and the impact we have on one another—the way our actions, words and presence shape other people’s emotional environments.
Among the key themes is the element of love: love as exchange, interaction and bond. A complex physical and mental state, shifting and vulnerable, leaving marks of many different shapes and forms.
My approach is divided into abstract images and shapes that aim to give form to physical and mental states, but also into portraiture work, where the subjects engage with their personal experiences.
Aside from this, my other main focus is fashion photography—especially capturing moments in motion, bringing attention to details that would otherwise go unnoticed.
How did you find your visual literacy? Why are you attracted to certain images more than others?
I’m still in the process of learning and educating myself. I’ve come to understand that learning about photography is a lifelong lesson, made of experiences and connections. I find myself drawn to images with texture and color, those that, when I look at them, I can almost hear, smell, and feel their essence.
As I continue building my narrative, I recently started incorporating materials into my photography, creating small abstract sculptural forms that exist solely within the moment of the photograph. I’m also exploring visual language through painting on darkroom prints, to add a sense of three-dimensionality to details and emotions I want to enhance.
Imagine meeting someone who is picking up a camera for the first time. What do you tell them?
To capture exactly what they’re seeing in the unique way they’re seeing it. I feel that the beauty of photography lies in the ability to give shape to the outside world through the way each of us sees our surroundings. It always amazes me to see how people around me perceive the same landscape. Different details of the outside world catch our eye based on our past.