Osvaldo Sanviti

Italian photographer Osvaldo Sanvati, discusses the work presented here from Le Soleil moribund, a project that sets forth debate on a whole host of issues from the ethics of representing women who ply a certain trade to the consequences of online anonymity as well as matters pertaining to the frontiers of authorship and appropriating images from the Internet. The lo-fi images form part of a looking game, one of seeing without being seen, and are obviously very subjective and personal, driven by his aesthetic goals and approach.

“In 2009 I was trying to start again with my long-term project of female portraits began in 1996 and stopped for about 3 years. One day I came across on the internet on one of these live sex chats: they are public live videos where girls try to bring in private registered visitors (members) to earn money. The first thing that struck me was, from a formal and pictorial point of view, the soft palette of colors of the video (even at the expense of quality). I was also intrigued by the loneliness of the subjects, in their rooms among neon lights and closed windows, when they are in a state of intimacy with themselves, almost as if they had forgotten to be visible to an audience. (…) What I like is the live dimension, of the life flowing, the strength of unplanned and unscripted situations; I love this feeling of waiting to meet the right subject in the right situation with the right light.”

After completing photography studies at Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, Italy, Sanviti started focusing his research on personal projects, “trying to establish a partial and personal world, in a more lyrical than documentary way”. He has contributed commissioned works for several magazines and has exhibited in Italy and abroad in shows such as Tempi in scena: mo­ments de la photographie contemporaine italien­ne (curated by Paul di Felice) in Galerie Nei Liicht, Dudelange, Luxembourg in 2001; Passaggio di testimone (curated by Filippo Maggia) in Venice, Italy in 2002; Backlight 02 in the 6th International Photographic Triennial, Tampere, Finland in 2002; and his 2007 solo exhibition at Galleria Nicola Ricci, Pietrasanta, Italy.