The Monkey Mind, Meditation and Southwestern Road Trips
In Conversation with Bay Area Artist Nicolo Sertorio
“A whispered message can be much more powerful than a slap in the face.” — Nicolo Sertorio
Oakland-based photographer Nicolo Sertorio knows the importance of cross-pollination. As President of the American Society of Media PhotographersNorCal, he strives to nurture a vibrant photographic community in the Bay Area. The stunning CREATE Space he founded belies this belief, as do his mixed media collaborative pieces, like Collaborations: 3 Eyes.
While undoubtedly a man of his community, Nicolo also espouses the necessity of solitude and silence for creation. He speaks carefully and shoots critically, and his cerebral demeanor reverberates throughout his work. It is clear that Nicolo composed his series of US Southwest photographs, featured here on ViewFind, with an expert’s eye and a meditator’s mind.
The photographs simultaneously convey the beauty of the American landscape and the emptiness of the American dream. The images draw you in with their neat compositions and colors, then slowly carry you into a contemplative dream state. One must take a second look not just at the photos, but also the ideological mainstays that compose American identity.
ViewFind spoke with Nicolo to discuss his unconventional path to professional photography, his need for meditation and the the landscapes of both the Southwest and the mind. — Michelle Robertson
Michelle Robertson: Tell me about your background. How did you become a photographer?
Nicolo Sertorio: I got a camera from my mom when I was five or six, and that became my way to explore the world. I used to call it my window to and from my world.
Growing up in Italy, that world was basically the opposite for me. I later figured that there was no way for me to have any career [in photography] so I started studying business economics. I began working at HP, and I moved to its Palo Alto headquarters in ‘99.
Eventually, I realized I was on the wrong side of the table; I wanted to be the creator, not the user.
I realized that I had power and responsibility early at my age, and I realized that that wasn’t what I wanted. I was not driven by power, money, responsibility, it was about doing something meaningful to me. So when I got to the worldwide headquarters, I basically realized this was not me. I took a year off and lived in India, where I decided it was time for me to go back to what was my dream all along.
You’ve traveled all over the world. What are some of the places you’ve lived?
I’ve lived in Italy, Ireland, India, Switzerland, the UK, Belgium, New Mexico, California, New York, and I have visited for periods of 2 to 8 weeks many other countries.
When did you catch the travel bug?
I come from mixed ethnicity parents. My mom was German and my dad Italian. They were both professors so there was a lot of traveling as kids. I was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and two years later, my brother was born in Geneva.
How did this upbringing affect you?
We were always kind of trying to settle. As soon as we got it, we would have to move somewhere else. But then, as we matured, we started to see what this global upbringing, for lack of a better word, was doing to us. It gave us a much broader perspective on life, and it pushed us to create personal opinions, instead of adopting what society wanted us to believe.
You are confronted by radically different ways of doing things from one place to another. When you live in the same place, it’s harder to distinguish between what you perceive and what the world around you wants you to perceive.
Photo by Nicolo Sertorio
You are the president of the Northern California chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). What does ASMP do?
ASMP is the oldest and largest organization of professional photographers in the US, founded in 1947. It’s chapters are all over the US.
The national level is doing a lot of support for photographers, like copyright, representing them in Congress, insurance, business practices and national accounts. At the local level, it’s more connected to the community.
What are some of your goals for the NorCal chapter?
I want to make sure that members get more [from the association] than what they pay to be a member. Second, I want to bring the photographic community in the Bay Area together.
The ultimate goal is to realize that by collaboration, we can do more than we can by ourselves.
Collaboration seems really important to you. Why?
It used to be that photographers would connect with each other when we brought film back to the film lab in town. There was a time when we’d cross paths and ask, “How are you? What are you working on?” and so on. But many other things have gone to digital and more and more work is done in solitude. Like myself, I spend hours in front of my computer editing, emailing, and that creates this sense of isolation. And so I think it’s more important than ever to find ways to be out in the world.
Maybe call me old-school, but I don’t think it’s old-school; I think it’s more of my European upbringing. I’m a firm believer that we’re human beings and we need and crave human connection, in-person interaction, and that’s when truly grand ideas are created. And this wall of social media is a vast and poor second-level replacement of that in-face experience.
And I think we’re in this transition period where, now, people are starting to realize all that they’ve lost by isolating themselves. There’s more and more of this need for a community reemerging.
At the same time, it can be hard. Sometimes when we do these events, people don’t understand the importance of being together. They think instead, “Oh, I’d much rather be on my iPhone, tell me where I can download the slides.” And people tend to get lazy about going out and leaving their house. Times have changed.
We’ve spoken extensively about collaboration, but now I’d like to shift gears to ask you about your own projects, specifically your photographs of the US Southwest (featured on ViewFind).
[With the project] I try to give my perspective as an American that isn’t really an American and an Italian that’s not really an Italian. I remember doing all of these road trips with my mom when we were kids with an RV. Having grown up mostly in Europe, I was blown away by the grandeur of the nature, the landscape. But also, as a kid, I was still a part of that big American Dream of the open space and the conquest of the West and the road trips and the freedom. These were so appealing for an entire generation of Europeans that had experienced World War II.
I did not experienced World War II, but I was the first generation after that still felt the weight of nations and borders and ideological differences. So there was this American Dream. And when I moved here and I started going on trips to the Southwest to revisit that dream, I started noticing that I was stopping at rest areas, which I remember from my childhood and are now 99 percent of the time empty and abandoned.
Why do these rest areas resonate with you so much?
I could tell that they’re so charged… to me they became these archeological remains of this American Dream of the West and so on. They looked like teepees, or oil rigs or umbrellas — it’s not just a bunch of structures. Someone had dreams and ideas when they built them, and now they’re being replaced by single buildings, large structures with air conditioning and restaurants. Part of it became looking into the death of the ideology.
Photo by Nicolo Sertorio
Why did you embark on these road trips in the first place? Traveling just for the sake of movement, or was there a specific destination in mind?
I guess it started years back when I first decided I wanted to attend PhotoFest, the biggest fine arts photography fair. So spur of the moment, I said I was going to do it, signed up, and immediately there was this surge of emotion. It reminded me of all the trips I did with my mom, who had passed away a year before. In a way, it was almost a trip down memory lane or an homage to my mom who had passed away from cancer.
Why are these road trips so important to you?
It becomes natural to carve out some time to do personal work, which in turn, at least for me, requires a certain calmness, a peace of mind.
I find it hard to do personal work when I’m [at home in Oakland], because for me, my personal work is almost like meditation. I need to pull out and be in that calm, silent space where I’m at peace with myself for ideas to start bubbling up.
So you need to enter this certain head space, put time away, in order to create?
Do you meditate? If you’re on a 10-day retreat, the first three to four days, the monkey mind is going all over the place. The past and the future, jumping. And then slowly it calms down. And the human cycle is 10 days to let go. Even if I set time apart, the monkey mind doesn’t work like that.
It takes me days of silence and separation to not worry about how am I paying rent at the end of the month, or this client and that client to really be like, Ok, what’s coming out from inside of me? How am I perceiving the world around me? To me that takes days of silence.
What you’ll find some practices of meditation saying is that the answers are within us; we just need to be able to hear the voice. The only way to hear our own voice is by calming the disturbing voices all around — the monkey mind, the today and tomorrow, the errands, the jumping back and forth.
What the work is trying to convey is that I’m driving for days and days. I don’t have radio or music, I just need to go and enter this meditative state where slowly you let go and emerge with peace of mind.
That inner voice has the answers of what I want in life, my cravings, desires, wishes, dreams. I just need to be able to listen to that. And when I can listen, that’s when the so called miracles happen.
Photo by Nicolo Sertorio
Your photographs are composed so carefully. What visual approach do you take when shooting in the US Southwest?
It all starts with visual language. Just like the regular language, there’s a grammar you need to be aware of and familiar with. The point is not the grammar, it’s not just what you’re trying to say with your story or poem, it’s about your dialogue with the reader. To me, it’s about the individual language in the respect that I want to create a dialogue, a meaningful dialogue with the viewer. And not, you know, beauty for the sake of beauty, or throwing something in your face sensationally like blood, sex, politics and so on. It’s more of a hint of something that can trigger a logical conversation.
Can you elaborate on this concept of “hinting” to trigger a conversation.
We tend to get desensitized, I know that I do. I see so much work where I don’t engage in the conversation as to why this happened in this part of the world, and it’s just like… I can’t deal with this right now. My work wants to step back from that and say no, I’m not going to hit you in the face. I create a landscape that is approachable, nice, soft. It’s compositionally well-done. There’s nothing trapped in the image per say.
But at the same time it’s a little off. It makes you think, ok, what’s happening here. I think a whispered message can be much more powerful than a slap in the face.
View more of Nicolo Sertorio’s work here and on ViewFind.
Coverage of Nicolò's recent trip to Croatia
Nicolò has recently returned from Croatia where he had two shows together for the very first time; 'Once We Were Here‘ and ‘Rest Areas of US South West’ in the Koprivnica Art Gallery Koprovnica, Croatia.
While in Croatia he was interviewed by various national and local newspapers, a radio show, and a television show. He also gave speeches to a group of local High School students and the local University on Photography in Social Media.
Projects will also be featured in this years 24th general conference of the International Council of Museums in Milan, IT.
Please visit the links below for the full stories on his travels.
Three Huge Shows Coming to Croatia!
Nicolò will be showing two different series, together for the very first time; ‘Once we were here‘ and ‘Rest Areas of US South West’.
There will be 45 large prints (36″ wide) displayed at the show.
This show will then move to three different cities in Croatia:
- May: Koprivnica art museum
- July: Split (Diocletian’s palace, set of ‘Game of Thrones’ TV series)
- September: Virovitica Art Museum
Projects will also be featured June this year at the 24th general conference of the International Council of Museums in Milan, IT.
Nicolò will be providing a workshop: Photography in the Age of Social media, and give several talks, including the Antun Nemcic Gostovinski’ Elementary School as well as developing a new project: Croatian Castles.
Show in Philadelphia: Gallery 1401
I am very excited to announce the opening of my solo show 'Redacted Topographies' at Gallery 1401 within the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
A huge thank you to Harris Fogel for the incredible honor and for all his support and patience along the way.
This show represents yet another departure for me: not only have I finally abandoned my obsession with the purity of the image by introducing some other design elements, but I have also aged and manipulated the prints (on Kozo japanese paper). I am personally very happy with the result, but I would of course love to hear what you think!
The show will be up until February 5th, so do go visit if you are in the area:
Gallery 1401
Monday - Friday
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
215-717.6300
Terra Hall
211 S Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
From the gallery press release:
Philadelphia – San Francisco-based photographer Nicolò Sertorio’s “Redacted Topographies” series is about our relationship with the environment around us: how we perceive it, how we live in it and how we relate to it. The more we move to urban lifestyles that are connected mostly through the web of technological means, the less we understand the world we live in and thus loose our respect toward it. Sertorio states that, “This series is a hypothetical archeology of the failed ideology of the conquest of nature; it is my belief that the idea of 'conquering’ nature has become an excuse for the indiscriminate abuse of the land. Individuality and personal freedom have turned into selfishness; there is no social accountability, no price to pay for any environmental damage. I therefore imagine a near future where humans have self-destructed and disappeared.” Beautiful landscape photographs combined with a scientific mapping system provide an alternative view of the environment.
Nicolò Sertorio is a fine art and commercial photographer based in the Bay Area in California. He earned a BA degree in International Business from the University of Dublin, Ireland, and an MBA in Economia e Commercio from the Università degli studi di Torino, Italy. Born in Princeton, his parents were both university professors, later moving to Turin, Italy, where he grew up. Later they moved to Switzerland for eight years, then finally to California, where he worked for 10 years at HP as a solution strategist for the digital imaging group before leaving to start his own photography practice. In between, he lived in Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, India, France and Germany, and his work reflects this set of diverse aesthetic and cultural influences. He is president of the Northern California chapter of ASMP. His work has won numerous awards, including Critical Mass finalist, Prix de la Photo Paris, International Loupe Award, PDN Photo of the Day, American Photography 30, The Center for Fine Art Photography “Portfolio ShowCase 6,” Blurb “Photography Book Now,” FotoWeek DC International Awards, among others. Among the publications that have featured his work are Fraction Magazine, Lensculture, art magazin kontura (Croatia), Domus magazine, AdWeek, DoubleTakes and Time magazine.
Now in its 17th year, Gallery 1401 offers a year-round regular schedule of exhibitions of contemporary photography. Associate Professor and former director of the Photography program Harris Fogel, who founded Gallery 1401 in 1999, has been director/curator of both 1401 and Sol Mednick since 1997.
Rest Areas of the US Southwest: updated!
Now that I have this new cool web site I can finally create sub-menus and more complete web pages. So in celebration I updated the series 'Rest Areas of the Southwest' with many new images. Also, I finally arranged them by state!
http://nicolosertorio.com/work#/rest-areas-of-the-us-southwest-2012/
Art And Artisans: Photography, Portraiture And A New Way Of Seeing
MAR 13, 2012
Art And Artisans: Photography, Portraiture And A New Way Of Seeing
Text by SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda
Images by Nicolò Sertorio
The light streams in through a darkened window, lighting up a block of wood. Embedded within the wood is a shining circle of silver. A long finely pointed pin in his hand, a man is tracing patterns on the metal. He is peering closely in concentration, totally wrapped up in his work.
Putting the pin down, he takes up a light hammer and a thick, solid chisel. Relying purely on his eyes and his hands, he begins hammering out the patterns he has just traced. A light tapping sound fills the room. The noise is constant and repetitive, yet the hands do not tremble and the fingers remain steady. As the hammer rings out, the patterns take shape before our eyes.
Beside the man, lies an open wooden toolbox. It is a glimpse into his craft and his life. Spilling out is a collection of saws, chisels, nails and razors. In the softness of the morning light the lines stand out sharply, an amalgam of different shapes and forms. Some of the tools have cutting edges, others are long and pointed; some have blunted points and flattened ends, one or two are shaped like keys. It is a way of working and a way of life which has not changed for centuries, a culture which is still alive today.
E. N. Wimalasooriya is one in a long line of hereditary craftsmen. For generations his family have been the metal workers, silversmiths and jewelers of Sinhalē, the last independent kingdom of Sri Lanka. Known to outsiders as the Kande Uda Rata, “the Land above the Mountains,” to its own people it was Sinhalē, the last bastion of more than 2,000 years of culture and tradition. A hidden, guarded realm, surrounded by rugged mountains and steamy tropical jungles, it lay at the very heart of Sri Lanka. For nearly three centuries, the people of Sinhalē held the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British at bay. In 1815 the ancient kingdom was betrayed to the British by its own nobility. Today this whole region is known as Kandy, British shorthand for Kande Uda Rata. Wimalasooriya is a quiet, gentle man, soft spoken and unassuming. He is a master craftsman, yet he is humble to a fault. Shy and hesitant before the camera, he mumbles “There is nothing special about me, there are so many others.” His life has always been his work and he has been working since he was seventeen. He is now in his sixties but his teacher, he tells us, is still alive and working. Wimalasooriya’s workshop adjoins his home, which lies next door. Everything he needs is within arm’s length or walking distance. He does not have to go out and sell, people come to him. He is very much his own man. He cannot be hurried, he works at his own pace and names his price. He is so trusted that quantities of gold, silver and precious stones are left with him for months on end. With quiet pride he tells us that no one has ever been able to point out any mistakes that he has made.
Wimalasooriya’s only child is his daughter. Although not yet twenty one, Ashani is a school teacher. Her world is one of books, children and classrooms. Yet she has inherited his ability to draw, capturing curving, complex patterns with easy skill. As her father gets older it is she who does the sketches. “Yes”, Ashani admits with a shy smile, like him, now she can draw almost any pattern. One day perhaps, it will be she who carries on the traditions.
Photographer Nicolò Sertorio, an Italian and an American had never been to Sri Lanka before. Although he had spent several months in India, for him Sri Lanka was a very different experience. The picture of this part of the world, he observed, had come mostly from photojournalists and tourists. The photojournalists often saw only struggle, conflict, poverty, war and disaster. Tourists however, often saw the beauty but what they really focussed on were the differences. Things often seemed so strange and so foreign that this was all they saw. People were not connecting with the person anymore.
Nicolò recalls one of his first impressions of India. “Hundreds and hundreds of rickshaws massed together.” His first thought was survival. “How can we get home safely? How can people live like this? How can they make sense of it? How can I make sense of this?” It took several months before he could accept what he saw as a part of a way of living. “As I started to talk to people, I began to see beyond the superficial. Only then did I begin to see the rhythms and the stories, to understand them as a different way of life.” Only then did he become aware of how much time and how much desire it took to go beyond the superficial. “It also took opportunity.”
Guided by his friend, Sri Lankan artist and designer, Nisansala Karunaratne, Nicolò set out to explore the art and traditions of Kandy. Struck by the differences between the worlds, he wanted to portray the craftsman in a new light. The question he asked himself was how could he convey it visually. “In America we watch television every day but we don’t really see.” There is a form of indoctrination in the filtering of any image. America is such an overwhelmingly visual society, so full of television, film and vivid color that the eye has become habituated and desensitized. “In a way we have to see again, to distance ourselves from habituation and preconception.”
Nicolò began to think about using portraiture as a way of seeing. Portraiture in the western style was usually very high end. It was very visual and technically very well executed.
“It is well lit and well done, so that we focus only on the person, not the environment. What I wanted to do was to take out the environment. To remove the element of judgment, to create a visual image which would connect eye to eye.”
****
Not far away from the silversmith’s home, hidden away in a maze of leafy overgrown lanes, was another village of craftsman. This area was home to the weavers of Sri Lanka’s famous Dumbara mats. They too had once been royal craftsmen. Before 1815 they had made wall hangings and mats at the direction of the king to decorate his kingdom. The material which they use is hemp.
Once the leaves and stalks have been gathered together, they are scraped against a log with a wooden tool. The scraping removes the fleshy part of the leaf, leaving a yellow green fibre. The fibre is then oiled and brushed and spun into a thick, fluffy thread, like cotton. This thread is then woven on a small simple loom which is placed on the floor.
This is one of the most traditional of crafts. It is a long and painstaking process. Sitting on the floor, the weaver’s concentration is intense as he picks out the lines with a very fine needle. Long years of poring over his work have meant that he too has to wear spectacles. Inch by inch the mat takes shape and the design starts to appear. It can take anything between three to ten days to make just one mat.
Like the silversmith, Dharmadasa also works at home. His features are sharp and his face alert. He too seems to be well into his sixties. Starting just after he left school, he had learned his craft from his father. In the tradition of most Kandyan craftsmen, his family were also farmers and like his father before him, Dharmadasa still farms his lands. His mats have won him national recognition and today he works with some of Sri Lanka’s finest designers. Now he has begun teaching his son, so that he can pass the custom on.
The weaving of cloth was once widespread throughout the provinces of the Kandyan kingdom. Today it is only practiced in the remote hamlet of Talagune, hidden away amidst the mountains and valleys of the Kandyan countryside. Narrow winding roads climb up and down the side of rocky peaks, passing through forests, gushing streams and gleaming paddy fields; even today Talagune seems lost in time.
This is the one and only village which has been weaving since royal times. Whole pieces of cloth are woven on large wooden looms. They are worked by pedals, whose movement throws the shuttle across the loom. This too is a farming society. Unlike the craftsmen of medieval Europe, the artisans of Kandy did not live in towns, they had no shops and did not work for hire. Sirisena and his family still work the paddy fields which lie nearby.
His grandfather had taught Sirisena to weave. He has been weaving since he was sixteen. Both his sons, Chandana and Saman, had learned from him. One of them, Saman, had lost his leg in Sri Lanka’s long, unending war against the Tamil Tigers. During wartime, there had been little work and they had all had to do other things. Saman had joined the army and gone off to the war. Although he could no longer use the looms, he works on the smaller pieces, such as wall hangings and table mats. Since the end of the war in 2009, things have changed. “Now there are lots of people coming.”
As the pedals are worked, the clanking begins and the bars begin to move. Glistening, brilliant threads are thrown to and fro across the wooden beams, creating dazzling geometric forms. The pace of work is leisurely, everyone stops to chat and there are peals of laughter. In the background is the sound of the radio.
The colors may vary but the designs remain traditional. The old is used to cater for the new. However, to weave just one piece could take as much as five and a half days. “It all depends,” says Sirisena. Many of the designs are still unique. Up till now, he says no one has been able to do them on a machine. Nisansala asked about the design which Nicolò had commissioned. “When could he have it?” Sirisena smiled. “I’ll give it to you when it’s ready.”
SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda
Writer, historian and art historian, SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda is an authority on the art and culture of Sri Lanka. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on India and Sri Lanka.