Since Sofia Fioramonti was a child she took pictures and when at 14 her father gave her a Canon camera she started her research within the field. But she is not only a photographer and she does not want to be defined as one. Sofia focuses on expressing herself through images of her daily and intimate life.
Who am I? What is happening around me? are some of the questions that Fioramonti wants to resolve with her artistic journey.
Paris, Lisbon and Montpellier, are some of the cities where she started discovering and experiencing a great passion for documentary photography.
Sofia started to produce personal projects at a very young age and worked on solo and group exhibitions. In April 2021, she presented her first short film Le Nid at the virtual exhibition Nostalgia at the Holy Art Gallery in London. She now working towards new goals and objectives for her career.
What was your first step in becoming an artist?
I never studied art but I always tried to grow my creativity and sensibility towards art, observing and listening the world around me. The environment where I grew up was crucial having had a lot of influences. My father was a photography and music enthusiast and my mother loved cinema and literature.
When I was 14 my father pushed me to explore the world of photography with a very special present: my first Canon. After school I dedicated myself to photography and my passion grew and grew overtime. Then I started my Architecture degree in Rome.
My very first contact with art, however, came after I arrived in Lisbon in 2018. Living in Lisbon gave me a new beginning and the chance to grow and explore not only my surroundings but myself. The colors of the city exploded within me and I felt the need to leave a trace of what I was going through. I took my old Contax and I started recounting, creating a kind of visual diary of my life and of the people that lived in it. Photography, really quicly, became my primary language - one through I could bridge my mind with the outer world.
How do you define yourself in the creative industry?
For many years I asked myself who was I and what role I had within society. I do not think it is possible to define myself at this point of my career but I also think this is a great advantage that is left with the mission of delivering a message, choosing the story that one wants to tell.
What is indispensable for you while working in your studio?
Generally, when I take pictures or film a video, I find myself in the most diverse contexts - I am either surrounded by people or caos. In that case my subconscious comes as an ally. I take picture with my instinct.
In the post-production ohase, in my own studio, I need something different: music and my own company. Music is my oxygen, it fills me with new ideas and comes along with me. Being alone allows me to remain concentrated and focus.
Who are your favorite artists and who are the ones that inspired your creative imaginery?
My creative imaginery is a big puzzle composed by a huge variety of ppieces coming from painting, photography and cinema. Surely, one of my favorite artist is Edward Hopper. Speaking of photography I would say, without a doubt, Nobuyoshi Araki, Nan Goldin and Antoine d'Agata. Sentimental Journey and The Ballad of Sexual Dependency were a great inspiration for me in the past and they remain - even now - two of my favorite books. For what concerns cinema I love the dystopian gaze of Yorgos Lanthimos and the brutality of Gaspar Noé.
Now that the pandemic seems to be almost over, what are your plans for the future?
At the moment I am working on a important collective exhibition that will take place in London in March. I am also working on closing and then publish my photographic project.
What kind of relationship do you have with social media and how to you use them?
I have a pretty complicated relationship with social media. More than once I thought about closing my accounts. One of the reasons is that I think social media pushed the artistic research towards a merely aesthetic vision. They became a showcase of meaningless visual informations. There is a lack of language grammar and the subjects have nothing to say.
On the other hand, artists cannot be competitive without social media as they became a really important space for artistic research in which is now possible to find ways to enter in the world of art with open calls, workshops, exhibition and various events.
