SANDRO GIORDANO

When you say: stand up for... Or maybe would be better say: to lose the face

__84 PERRY STREET

Your photo array is entitled In extremis (bodies with no regret). From what this project is born and what does regret mean for you?

__This project is born a bit as a joke in September 2013. I have been an actor for twenty years and during that period we were going on stage with a show when one of mine colleagues asked me if I could take her a particular, different, funny photograph. We were at the end of a long staircase which was a part of the scenery. Without thinking about it, I begged her to climb onto her head with the body lying on the last steps, as if she had just fallen. She did it without any questions, I took my iPhone and I snapped. Immediately I fell in love with the fun and disturbing picture I saw on my display and I asked to other two actresses to do the same thing. Since then I have never stopped. As the days passed, the desire of taking this type of photo was stronger. The need of talk about the external and interior world and its get wrecked. As in an unexpected blackout of body and mind, peoples drop without any protection overwhelmed with life’s weight.

In the Catholic Church the last rites are given shortly before death. I wanted to play with this subject precisely in order to underline that my characters are not this. People who have fallen but they are ready to get back up; they are anything but dead and hopeless.

__ANY DAY

You use a very thin irony: at first sight your images create a lough but soon after you realize the tragedy and the misfortune of these people. How you manage to combine these two aspects that apparently are apart and mixed?

__They are less apart and mixed then they seem. You suggest me at seeing the pictures you smile. This is our reaction when we see someone crash into a glass door, after we help him but inside our self we’re still laughing like fools. I believe this big laugh is absolutely cathartic and really empathic, because we put ourselves in the shoes of other: it could have happened to us. Therefore, we laugh about ourselves and I am firmly convinced this is a great dowry. Only who is gifted of irony can afford the luxury of laughter. Irony is synonym of lightness and consequently of happiness.

__FOLLOW ME PLEASE

Has your job been influenced by who or what?

__I grew up with Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. Falls and crashes present in their films have certainly influenced my work more than anything else. I take inspiration from everyday life and from enviroment. But I also studied as a draftsman designer before becoming an actor and these two aspects are very marked and peculiar in my photos. I love so much film and especially that cynical and zany of John Waters, the undisputed king of American trash films of the 70s and 80s.

__MY LOVELY BOY

Who would you suggest to follow on Instagram and why?

__I love the melancholy black and white of darkolabor (@darkolabor) and his rarefied nuances, almost dreamlike. Explosive blue of Benedetto Demaio's (@benedettodemaio) photos, which brings me back to exciting Mediterranean atmosphere and the smell of lemons from Sicily. I am also in love with disturbing and poetic figures of mothmeister (@mothmeister).

__GRAVE ROBBER

BIO

Sandro Giordano born in Rome on October 6th 1972. Sandro studied set design at the Istituto per la Cinematografia e la Televisione Roberto Rossellini in Rome. Immediately after graduating he began working as a light and sound engineer in Roman theatres. In 1993, he studied acting in one of Rome’s best private schools and the following year he began his professional career as an actor with directors such as Luciano Melchionna and Giancarlo Cobelli on stage and Dario Argento, Davide Marengo, Carlo Verdone and again Melchionna on film. Sick and tired of the entertainment industry, Sandro moved to Barcelona where he’s lived since 2010. He often returns to Rome in order to be part in the show Dignità Autonome di Prostituzione, which he is deeply attached to. Since October 2013, Sandro has been entirely devoted to the photographic project IN EXTREMIS (bodies with no regret).