دراسات الحالة
توماسو بالديساريني
المنتجات التي تم نشرها: ColorEdge CG2730
توماسو بالديساريني – صناعة "نسخة 28MM من مانهاتن"
أمضى المصور الفوتوغرافي توماسو بالديساريني المقيم في برلين أربعة أسابيع وهو يتجول في شوارع منطقة نيويورك من أجل كتابه بعنوان "28MM – Edition Manhattan". وقد استعان بالديساريني بنحو 10 آلاف صورة لإنشاء كتاب مذهل من 352 صفحة، وقد أنتج هذا الكتاب ونشره بنفسه. ولعبت طابعة EIZO ColorEdge CG2730 دورًا رئيسيًا في عمليات ما بعد الإنتاج والطباعة الناعمة.
لقد كانت نيويورك بمثابة خلفية لأجيال من المصورين. ولا ينبغي أن يكون هذا مفاجئًا: فقد اجتذبت المدينة الناس بسحرها لعدة قرون. ولم يتمكن توماسو بالديساريني المقيم في برلين أيضًا من مقاومة جاذبية المدينة.
كان بالديساريني، البالغ من العمر 32 عامًا، قد اكتسب شهرة كبيرة في السابق باعتباره مصورًا حائزًا على جوائز للصور الشخصية ويفضل العمل في مشاريع واسعة النطاق بموضوع مركزي واحد. ومع مرور الوقت، استمرت الرغبة في مغادرة حدود الاستوديو الآمنة في النمو. يقول المصور الذي تلقى تعليمه في الجامعة في التعبير عن مخاوفه: "عندما تعمل في الاستوديو، يكون لديك فريق، ويمكنك التحقق على الفور من الصور وإجراء التعديلات إذا لم تكن النتائج على ذوقك، ولديك سيطرة كاملة على الإضاءة والعارضات. بعد بضع سنوات، تصبح مقيدًا بشدة فيما يتعلق بآفاقك الفنية".
نيويورك: السحر وأسلوب الحياة الأمريكي
استمع بالديساريني إلى نصيحة صديق وزميل مصور، الذي نصحه بالخروج من منطقة الراحة الخاصة به: "فقط افعل ذلك. جرب شيئًا جديدًا وشاهد ما سيحدث". في خريف عام 2016، شق بالديساريني طريقه إلى نيويورك، المدينة التي ترمز إلى الثروة والحداثة والتي أثبتت أنها تجذب الملايين الذين يأتون إليها لتجربة وتصوير سحرها وأسلوب الحياة الأمريكي.
كانت خطة بالديساريني هي قضاء شهر في قلب مدينة نيويورك النابض بالحياة، والذي يقع بين نهري هدسون وإيست: مانهاتن. وسعى إلى الاقتراب قدر الإمكان من الناس الذين يعيشون هناك والتقاط صور لهم في ضوء أصيل وصادق. وكانت كل المعدات التي احتاجها بالديساريني هي كاميرا Leica Q. وقال بالديساريني في وصفه لعملية إنشاء الكتاب: "أجبرتني عدسة الكاميرا الثابتة ذات الزاوية العريضة 28 ملم على تغيير نهجي، والتغلب على تحفظاتي، والاقتراب من موضوعاتي. لقد لعبت دور المراقب السلبي، وتركت المشهد واللحظة والأشخاص الذين كنت أصورهم يسيطرون على المشهد. نيويورك مدينة التناقضات الصارخة، حيث يمكن أن تحدث لحظات لا تصدق في جزء من الثانية. ستفوتك أفضل اللقطات إذا كنت ترى العالم فقط من خلال عدسة الكاميرا".
التقاط اللحظات الخاصة عندما تحدث
It was just these magic moments that Baldessarini wanted to capture up close. He sought to blend in with his surroundings. Baldessarini got a sense for the city, studied the locations for his shoots, and dressed in black to avoid standing out. He spent an average of ten hours a day wandering the streets of Manhattan, during which he covered over ten kilometers. He always had the compact Leica in hand, with the camera manually pre-focused to one meter, the f-stop set to between 8 and 11, and exposure times kept to a minimum. He went where his feet took him and waited for just the right moment to capture the scene. The oppressive humidity and sweltering heat of New York in late summer really pushed Baldessarini to his limits. The reward was the photos, which are both extremely authentic and candidly honest.
Four Books of Photos
Baldessarini’s plan began to take shape. It calls for four books, one each devoted to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx, respectively. Once the four weeks were up, he headed back to Berlin with 10,000 photos in hand, exhausted but happy. The result is a social documentary that avoids tired clichés. It portrays the many sides of his subjects – be they eccentric, frail, resigned, or full of vigor – that also reflect the city itself.
Baldessarini and Bianca Winter, who curated the book, spent the next three months narrowing down the photos to 1,000 and then ultimately 450. These were then printed in two hard days of work to establish the central theme of the coffee-table book. “It was fascinating to see how printing the photos and allowing myself the time to gain a new perspective on my work opened up unexpected possibilities: People, colors, and patterns were to come together bit by bit to create a unified narrative,” he says in explaining his work with Bianca Winter. Baldessarini strongly believes that “the photos speak for themselves. The people in them tell their stories without the need for words.”
Self-produced and Self-distributed
While the book of photography was starting to take on form, Baldessarini had to make the key decision of whether to work with a publisher, as originally planned, or whether to self-publish his first coffee-table book. Although Baldessarini did meet with a number of publishing houses and received multiple offers, he ultimately decided to go it alone: “Many publishers simply transfer the financial risk to the young artist. They earn money while the artists are at best able to cover their costs – or end up bearing all the costs themselves if worse comes to worst.” That is how he describes the sobering reality of the publishing business.
And it is also why Baldessarini opted to self-publish the book, and it is why he sees the whole project as a learning experience: “I always do the post production work myself since I feel this is necessary in order to be able to properly realize my vision. Photography is extremely subjective, which is why the photographer needs to maintain full control over the process. In addition to everything else, I will also be doing the layout and marketing.”
Baldessarini does 90% of his photo-editing work in Capture One and 10% in Photoshop. He is one of the first photographers to work with the new ColorEdge CG2730 monitor from EIZO. “While the pictures always look great on my Apple monitors, they are often too sharp, too vivid, and too contrasty. That means I do not receive a realistic impression of how the image will actually look,” he says in explaining his decision. “That is the reason why I use hardware-calibrated graphics monitors from EIZO. The ICC profile from the print shop allows me to see in the soft-proofing view how the photos will look after they are printed. I was able to test out the EIZO ColorEdge CG2730 before it was even launched, and I am extremely happy with it. It’s a professional monitor fully capable of meeting the highest of standards.”
Baldessarini searched for the perfect paper for the job in the print shop, and he was able to decide on every last detail of the book. As he well knows: “The advantage is that I am not bound to the publisher’s guidelines.” On the downside, he cannot take advantage of their distribution network. “There are, however, other lucrative distribution channels opened up by social media,” Tomaso Baldessarini says with confidence.
Baldessarini is currently working on his next book on drag queens, to be titled “Queens”, with publication set for the summer of 2017. He is planning to return to the U.S. for three months at the end of the year to shoot his first documentary film as well.
About Tomaso Baldessarini
The freelance photographer earned his BA in 2012 from the University of Applied Sciences Europe in Berlin (BTK), where he specialized in photography. Since completing his studies, he has remained in Berlin and worked as a digital operator, retoucher, and photographer, most recently in the fields of commercial and art photography. The Phase One ambassador is represented by the Kelly Kellerhoff Agency. His work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including Die Welt, Die Zeit, Rolling Stone, and Vice. He was also the recipient of the 2016 International Photography Award presented by the Lucie Foundation, and took top place in the 2016 PX3 Competition. His works have been shown at group exhibitions in New York and Wisconsin as well as at a solo show at the Blond and Blond Gallery in Berlin in 2015 as part of the Anti.Mono Stereo series.
توماسو بالديساريني هو عضو في برنامج سفراء ColorEdge التابع لـ EIZO، والذي يسلط الضوء على المصورين المحترفين والمصممين وصانعي الأفلام وغيرهم من المبدعين الذين ملتزمون بإلهام وتثقيف الفنانين في جميع أنحاء العالم على جميع المستويات.
