This Side Down: Falls and Headplants in Sandro Giodrano’s Project

Sandro Giordano 42 years old

Born in Rome, Italy. Studied design at the Roberto Rosselini Institute for Film and Television. Worked as light and sound engineer at theaters in Rome, and worked as an actor, both in cinema and on stage. Since 2010 mainly lives in Barcelona, Spain, but often returns to Rome to take part in theater productions.

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“In Extremes (Bodies With No Regrets)” project started in 2013. I had an accident with my bicycle at the same time as my friend was taken to hospital with a broken leg. We were both trying to protect our things as we were falling down. In a materialistic seizure we neglected safety. Two months later I started shooting people falling down for my own pleasure.

The Idea

I concentrate on spiritual downfall than on actual physical process of it. I don’t show people’s faces, instead I let their bodies speak for them. Each of them saves an object; they hold it in their hand and it symbolises the falsification within them. All the objects represented in the frame symbolize pretence, only the body speaks the truth.

Since early childhood I liked Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy films because they made me laugh. In those films dreadful things were happening to the characters — they were constantly falling down. The natural first reactions to it — awkwardness and stupefaction because of the characters’ bad luck — are taken over by a liberating laughter. This is the effect I want to recreate with my images. I want to reconstruct a tragedy through irony. I would like people to sympathize with these stories through empathetic laughter.

The Process

The idea of a photograph lives in my head for a few days before I find a suitable location. I go there and do test shots, and study them on my computer. While looking at an empty scene, I think of the whole action, including the pose of the model. In most cases the location is an actual place in a city (staircases, courtyards, sidewalks, balconies are excellent for it). In “Big Nymphomama” I recreated a bedroom in my own photo studio.

The models are my friends and actor colleagues. I like working with people who know how to use their body. One needs a lot of physical and mental concentration to remain in the same position for a few minutes. Everything going on around the models is stage design, nothing is accidental. It takes at least ten days to do one image from start of finish.

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