Hello Davide

Please describe yourself, including where you are from and where you are currently living.

Cecily M. Caceu - NEM Founder Artist — **Cecily M. Caceu** - NEM Founder Artist

I live in Italy, partly in Torino, where I was born, and partly in Milano, where I work as a Senior Manager of an IT Services company.

My life is on the run and from this point of view Mobile Photography fits very well, enabling me to shoot and edit wherever I am: something I would not be able to achieve with DSLR gear.

What sort of rituals or routines do you have that help to feed your creative spirit or put you in a creative mindset?

I live a busy life and have to literally stretch my time to allow for creativity. I shoot when I see something that catches my attention in between my daily activities, and allow myself a dedicated shooting session only from time to time, maybe once a month.

The same goes for editing, where I feel I express most of my creativity: I do it at every idle moment I can get: at traffic lights, while having lunch or waiting for a meeting to start.

So no ritual, just an instant switch from normal life to short creative sessions. I know it sounds crazy, but it works for me.

I have noticed that you love to photograph architecture, abandoned buildings and city scenes. I am curious to know how these interests evolved?

I am lucky to be born in a city (Torino) that has a rich architectural heritage, ranging from medieval to baroque and art nouveau, and I always spent time looking up at the facades of the old houses, maybe in a way I was taking pictures of them with my mind.

So city scenery and architecture has always been a preferred subject of my photography, be it traditional or mobile photography. Buildings, especially old, and even more so if they are abandoned or derelict, have a story to tell, and I like to be a medium for it.

"Empry is the window of my soul" - Davide Capponi

I often find it easier to be creative while I am away from my usual daily routine. Do you feel that you are more creative when you are traveling or is this something that does not affect you?

Traveling always creates new suggestions, presents new sceneries, different ways of life so it is certainly an added stimulus to creativity.

Do you think people are born with a creative “gene” or do you think creativity is something that can be nurtured and grown through exposure to various cultural activities?

I think everyone has the ability to be creative, maybe at different levels and through different media, but culture has an important role in the development (but can also be a hindrance) of creativity.

When I was in my preschool years, I was drawing a lot, drawing monsters in particular. When I started school, after a few months, I found myself branded as lower than average in graphic arts and I stopped drawing anything, even in my free time.

My creativity found other roads through music, but until I found a new start through mobile photography, I thought of myself as incapable in graphic/visual arts. So my conclusion is that cultural influences can sometimes even be negative and there should be better ways to foster and develop individual creativity.

Do you have a background theme that permeates throughout your artwork? By this I mean do you have some sort of recurring emotional theme present in your artwork?

Yes, there is definitely an underlying theme to most, if not all of my artwork, and the incredible thing is that at first I was completely unaware it was there. I have a fairly instinctive approach to photography and editing, I kind of “let go” and things happen, I don’t usually write a script for my images before starting.

But it came out like a jigsaw, piece by piece through the comments and feedbacks of fellow mobile photographers: the theme is memory. Think about when you “freeze” a moment in your memory: it will be put in storage with visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and sometimes gustatory information, but also with emotion and the feelings associated with it.

Memories are alive in our mind: we go back to them more or less often, and every time we rework them, adding or subtracting bits for a number of reasons, so memories accumulate an emotional load in time.

When I work on my images, I kind of “dress” them with an emotional layer, transforming them from objective pixels of information to heartfelt memories.

Please explain your thoughts on what “reality” is? I am interested in what your own personal definition is and how it affects your artwork.

Reality is a personal view of the world; though we share or try to share a common understanding of what is around us we always see things through our personal lens.

There is a perfect representation of this in a fantastic old movie by Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon, where the same truth is told in alternative ways by four people.

What is it that made you decide to be an artist? Do you remember the exact moment... and how it happened?

I never decided to be an artist, but I always felt the need to create. It was music before and Mobile photography now, although neither are my profession, and maybe for good: creation must be a pleasure not a chore.

There has been a growing awareness of my capability to create, and this has been a fantastic feeling, I don’t think there was a moment but definitely I feel I am an artist now.

And finally, what do you believe is the true mission of an artist?

Art is communication. There is no art without a recipient, and the recipient defines what is art, not the artist; sometimes it may take decades before a recipient is found since great artists are ahead of their time, but the greater the art the longer it will live in time.

So the mission of an artist is to communicate, but what? I am not sure that there must always be a “message” in art, the communing is between the recipient and the artwork, not with the artist.

I am not saying that artists should not try to use their art to convey messages, but that the core of art is when someone looks at an artwork and feels something; that moment, that feeling that an artwork can summon in the viewer can change people, can make people stop and think. And eventually change the world.

Thank you very much Davide for sharing with us your insights on creativity and the Mobile Photography movement. I really enjoyed learning more about you and your thought processes. I find this to be a fascinating time to be involved in the photography world and it definitely sounds like you do as well. I very much look forward to seeing more of your creations.

Cecily M.Caceu

Hello Davide

Please describe yourself, including where you are from and where you are currently living.

For more chances to see Davide’s work follow the links below: