Barca e Rio, Venezia, Italia.

Any photographer uses the techniques that give form to his ideas and vision in the most effective way. When I make a photograph, I do it because what is around me has produced an emotion in my soul and I want to make this emotion visible in the external world. The medium we use to express ourselves is not to be considered as a purely mechanical aspect since it becomes the physical extension of our spirit and of what nourishes us. And inevitably this merges with the way we perceive our existence.

I think that black and white is for me – this is personal, of course – the medium that best enables me to reveal my feelings in the physical world. Colour photography profits by what is already familiar, since we don´t have to “learn” to see in colour. With black and white, on the contrary, the research is deeper, the vision is more elaborate, arduous and difficult also because it demands you to see the world in a way that is different from the way our eyes and our brain see it.

Skunk Cabbage, Olympic National Park, Washington, U.S.A.

In my life I always had masters. Masters I chose simply because their vision, their ethics and their “inner eye” were identical to mine, and who with their example, their skills and their work guided and inspired me. This is true both for climbing and for photography.

When I had the lucky chance to see the original prints by Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and John Sexton, I was overwhelmed by their pureness, vitality and sense of perfection. Struck by an unrestrainable joy I took the immediate and instinctive decision, no doubts, that this was the way I would manifest my inner soul. This way and no other. My life changed once again. And the mountains, indulgent and understanding as they had always been to me, encouraged me and let me embrace a vivid and sensual sheet of paper covered with a gelatin of silver.

Photo Gallery: Black and White Photography