This project, which gave rise to the book "Torino Milan – fifty photographs with no view-finder " was born from an encounter and collaboration of two Turin photographers, very different in age and training.
The photographs are taken by Pierpaolo Ottaviano but using a camera built by Giorgio Jano.
Giorgio Jano, born in 1948, is a photographer specialized in architectural and archaeology photography. For these fields he has designed and built various special instruments to resolve specific problems with shooting and visualization.
Pierpaolo Ottaviano, born in 1967, is a photographer specialized in urban landscapes and architecture.
From the fortunate synthesis of these different talents a special instrument was devised which, designed and built by Jano, initially for experimental and academic purposes, was later perfected with a contribution by Ottaviano so that it could compete successfully with the few and expensive cameras commercially available in the same field.
It is a wide-angle analog panorama camera built by hand and with old camera parts, which uses special 70 mm film for aerial photography in both black and white and colour, designed expressly for scenes of urban landscapes. This produces, for 360° shots, large format (6x22 cm circa) single pictures, and permits considerable enlargements because of the precision with which it was made, as well as the remarkable performance of its Apo-Grandagon 35mm tilt shift lens.
In this project there is a love for the tradition of photography that comes with the camera obscura, chemical development and printing: that analog photography that both Giorgio and I grew up with, without snubbing digital photography, but integrating it into the productive process.
The negative, after being developed is scanned and then the lighting and shading is elaborated. Finally it is printed Fine Art in large format with an ink-jet printer on cotton paper using carbon pigments.
"360° panoramic photography relates the architecture in the back with the architecture in front; in a photo there is every kind of lighting possible; in the final product the only straight lines are vertical; It goes beyond two dimensions but does not quite make three. It allows you and forces you to consider everything surrounding you.
I am certain that the feelings the shot produces when taken from one particular point and looking in a specific direction are also the sum of what is seen looking at the other perspectives.
One subject always dominates, but it is its relationship with the others (the other scenes) that produces the visual experience. Giorgio’s camera using unique technical characteristics to pan the space reproduces this cognitive process. The result is influenced by both the point it is shot from, since the relationships between the size of the architectures depend upon this, and by the point where the panning begins, since this determines what the dominating subject will be." Piero Ottaviano