In the Art & Photography section of our Journal we pay homage to artists who represent significant inspirational references to our brand. Today’s article is a tribute to photographer and painter Antonio Palmerini, whose projections of an imaginary and distant world seamlessly fuse photography, drawing and painting techniques.

CREATING IMAGES BEYOND PHOTOGRAPHY.

Photography has its magic to obscure one reality and fabricate another. It can give the artist full control to manipulate the senses, and such is the work of Antonio Palmerini, an exceptionally talented Italian photographer and painter. His work mainly features dark haired female figures, applying slow shutter speed, double exposure, long exposures and high contrast development. Shot on film, each frame is carefully processed and edited with various art techniques to create images that blur the boundaries between photography and art.

THE ARTISTRY OF MELANCHOLIA.

Palmerini’s style is dark, moody, misleading and most often dreamy, and could easily go along with the works of other artists we love such as Deborah Sheedy, Rimel Neffati and Kristamas Kloush. His shots picture images of ethereal figures, half-formed and vague as if captured in a window reflection or an old mirror. The result is portraits of ghostly figures, silent but tense, against textured, blurred, unsettling backgrounds. These stunning images represent a dreamy and distant world that undeniably leaves you touched and curious.

His photos have a cinematographic touch, from the beautiful composition to the movement he knows how to capture. By omitting certain details, the photographer leaves the spectators the possibility to follow the path of their imagination and to interpret the images in their own way, filling in their own story. The blur alludes to movement, and creates a new universe. The silhouettes are shapeless and in movement creating a phantasmagoric universe.

FUSING ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY.

Although Palmerini’s photography is generally black and white, but he has over time also explored the use of subtle colours. His palette of cold colours and gritty edge fits the aesthetics of these images perfectly, transforming them from photos into film-stills, making them part of a bigger story. Whether purely monochromatic or displaying nuances of colour, his oneiric images are all equally designed to elicit the spectators’ imagination and subconscious impulses.

Palmerini's himself describes his art as a as a way to give substance to imagination and dreams. His choice of techniques depends on what he wishes to capture: he uses the camera to depict what he does not want to paint, and painting to describe what cannot be photographed, like a dream or some kind of emotional impulse: “To me, photography is the mirror of imagination. I am interested in images that portrait a situation. I am not interested in people because I can portrait them, I am interested in people because they exist”.

OUR CONNECTION.

Palmerini’s surreal and pictorial photography is a significant inspirational reference to our brand, in particular to the creative process of developing some of our most distressed styles of shoes and boots. We really like the worn appearance of this photographer’s work, through the use of textured layers on top of his elegantly posed subjects. We also love the artist’s feeling of the past, and his being between photography and painting/drawing.

Ordinarily out of focus images are seen as mistakes in photography, yet for Palmerini, these elements are magnified and glorified, creating imperfections that become layers of texture and give substance, character and consistency to the the photographer’s work.

 

the editorial team.

  

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Antonio Palmerini (b. 1958), also known under the Antonio Merini alias, is a Rome-based photographer and painter. His latest work can be found on his Flicker and Tumblr accounts.

 

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‘Legend says, when you can't sleep at night, it's because you're awake in someone else's dream’. Anonymous.

 

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UNTAMED STREET is a contemporary men’s and women’s footwear brand, born from the union of London creative spirit with the Italian art of shoemaking. Our design code is inspired by modern and progressive arts, monochrome photography and urban landscapes. Bold and unapologetic, we blur the boundaries between art and fashion, embedding techniques used by painters and contemporary artists and fusing the artistry of luxury with the ethos and aspirations of modern city life.

read more about our philosophy.