Daniele Mattioli   //   Isolation

Daniele Mattioli is an Italian photographer based in Shanghai. He also travels frequently for his work, with arrives at him both through frequent commissions and his own artistic endeavor. Mattioli works between editorial and corporate realms. Mattioli, as a follower of change, creates images that are responsive and coordinatively aligned to social vectors. The selection of his subject matter – between place and person – is photojournalistic. Mattioli’s work is distinctly clean and professional. In China, he produces dramatic images of streetscapes, often weaving a guerrilla portraiture of unassuming subjects into a streetscape. He presents his editorial work in series. Each sequence clusters in place, which defines the presentation of the subject matter. By presented a portfolio of images, rather than a select, single representative of each shoot, he allows the individual’s place in their community, as well as their wayward personalities, give shape to the image. An aesthetic switch-a-roo occurred in his street work in China. He halted the production of posed portraits. Eschewing such conventions at least in the specific practice of shooting on the block, one that he followed in Italy and Japan, for example, he abandoned posing. Between his editorial and commercial work, the main distinction comes in the amount of light he allows in. He is quite stingy with the stimulus in his editorial work. In a commercial setting, you could lounge on a divan and eat little lightbulb-grapes off the stem, he gives you so much wondrous information.