Amateurs: Navigating the Fine Line Between Inexperience and Creative Dreaming
Being an amateur, trying to bridge the gap between artistry and livelihood, is a zealous feat. When ability doesn’t quite match drive, it leaves room for frustration and even despair. It’s easy, when looking at the greats with their (seemingly) fully-fledged identities and best works on display, to think you'll never be half as good as them. It’s only when a mistake is made that one realizes, "I could have failed there too," and the gig is up.
Mirko Ostuni, Ilaria De Benedetto, and Alma Longo, are three young Italian lens-based artists: Alma is a recent graduate from the London College of Fashion, and Mirko and Ilaria are students at the European Design Institute in Rome. They are amateurs. In its more negative connotation, the word "amateur" is synonyms with lack of skill, professionalism, or seriousness. It wrongly suggests that the person is inexperienced, unskilled, or not competent enough to perform a task. But these amateurs are artists, and you can see it in their pictures and hear it in their responses.
In these interviews, Mirko, Ilaria, and Alma speak candidly about their path towards self-realization, authenticity, the universal struggle between artistic integrity and commercial pressure, passion, their interpretations of reality, and their aspirations for creative recognition. These amateurs are artists on the right path, and in their own right.
If there is anything I have learned during these interviews with these young artists, it’s this: The least motivating type of artistic identity - especially in amateurs - is when they mimic established styles. The more motivating type is when they assert their own creative direction, as genuine artistic expressions possess a universal quality - as challenging, intimidating, and time-consuming as this journey may be.
I find the words of painter Suzi Gablik to be reassuring. In her 1984 book, Has Modernism Failed?, she states: “In the era of pluralism, when there are no longer any limits to what we can imagine or produce, very few people (…) have any real sense of what our art is for.” Perhaps I’ve actually interviewed some of these few here. But even if they weren’t it (and who knows, you and I might make the cut), I feel like I’ve come close.
Martina Cantore — Are you happy with where you are in your way of being a photographer?
Mirko Ostuni: At this moment in history, the summer of 2024, my answer is yes. I’ve realized I’m only 20 - even though up until a month or two ago I thought I was older. Thanks to some conversations and loving criticism on behalf of my mentor, Piero Percoco (a photographer from Puglia like myself) I’ve become aware of the fact that I was starting to live things only to photograph them. For some time now I’ve started to really live things, and subsequently photographing them - I always carry my camera around and the photos I take now represent my life: I can say it with conviction, up until a month ago I couldn’t. Before I was only trying to emulate other photos that I saw on Instagram - this is also due to the insane amount of images that are part of our daily lives. I’m happy, but at the same time: It’s life, it’s got highlights and lowlights, maybe in time my answer will change, but at the moment I’m happy.
Martina Cantore — Are you hopeful about the future of photography?
Ilaria De Benedetto: So, in my opinion you cannot answer this question without bringing up artificial intelligence; the new medium of photography. Then again though, I also think it's too early to have a definite opinion on the matter, because it hasn’t been long since we've been trying to understand it: Honestly I don't see it as too negative (for now): It's a tool, a new tool, and this is already a beautiful thing, because everything in some way, shape or form has already been done. Being that there is a new element, you can use it to create some novelty in the artistic world. I'm using it myself, I mean, I'm using it differently, in the sense of not just generating, but experimenting with it, because if one really plays with artificial intelligence there are so many different ways it can be used (positively or negatively).
© Mirko Ostuni
Martina Cantore — What about your place in it?
Alma Longo: It kind of worries me as a lot has been said and conveyed through photography, so reaching a point where you can convey it differently is hard. It also takes an understanding of how the world is evolving, especially the art world, or how we view things differently. And it’s hard to create something that you’re both happy with but also know that it will sell and get you far in your career. My photography is for myself, not for the eyes of others but my own, I don’t want to have to change that just to make money off it or make it commercial. This industry is also extremely competitive, and I don’t like to compete, I do it because it brings me joy and that’s what I’m trying to chase.
Martina Cantore — How do you see your photography evolving?
Mirko Ostuni: It evolves naturally as my life does. Change, for me, isn’t in the fact of learning new tricks - I’m lucky enough to be a student at a very competent school, and technically I’m learning a lot, even though I’ve been taking pictures since I was 14, I still find myself learning new things. I owe a lot to some of my professors, but at the end of the day it evolves with me and not through me. There are some phases in which maybe I’m fixated on something and that fixation becomes a part of everything I do - my life influences the pictures I take and the pictures I take sometimes influence my life. It may radically change on a technical and aesthetic aspect and other times it changes in regards to the sensations it may evoke. Obviously things have changed since I started at 14, even the subtle things, like the ways in which I work (in post) with black and white or seeing colors. But things, for me, have changed more in regards to sensations, and of how I live the act of photographing.
Martina Cantore — How much do you think photography (as art in general) is a collective experience? How much of it is solitary?
Ilaria De Benedetto: Mah, what you do is very much a result of the people you surround yourself with. Because the people you surround yourself with, whether you are aware of it or not, influence you. The feedback you receive also influences you so much. As far as I'm concerned - since I'm still studying - the professors, who teach me, who point out things, just like the people who send me things to look at, who make me think about the photographic medium, it’s them, it’s there that photography is a collective art form. Then again, I still believe in authorship, meaning one’s personal taste, their signature: In the end, it's a 50-50 thing. In the sense that your environment and the people you surround yourself with are an integral part of your work, however, your work is yours: There is your signature, your thinking, your way of looking at things.
© Ilaria De Benedetto
Martina Cantore — How did you get into photography?
Alma Longo: Honestly, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t into photography. It was something that developed at a young age for me. I have always been a little artist, and when I hit my teens I started to find beauty in my surroundings, wanting to capture a moment, not for the memories but because what I was seeing was visually satisfying to me and I wanted to show others what I was seeing. So with the help of a little digital Canon, I began taking pictures of nature, like the usual macro shots of butterflies resting on flowers or the shape of a tree that looked interesting or a landscape through a peephole. I feel like that’s how most photographers start, by capturing their surroundings. And then in high school, in art class, my teachers would make us photograph our own references and that’s how I started shooting portraits. That’s when my true passion for photography started, I became entranced by how many emotions a person could evoke with a simple change of light or expression. I became obsessed with the body’s imperfections and would capture details or frame a shape created by the body rather than showing the full figure. You know what they say, “looking at the bigger picture”, I was kind of doing the opposite, zooming into my subjects, I guess I was trying to capture something deeper.
Martina Cantore — How do you navigate the tensions between where you are and where you want to be?
Mirko Ostuni: I don't think about it anymore, I've stopped because I’ve realized I'm in my twenties and I want to have less paranoia from a point of view of just life. Before I moved to Rome (2 years ago) I was always thinking about what I wanted to do in the future, what I wanted to do in ten years, where I wanted to be, etc… Then I stopped because I said: “I’m ruining myself”, I had stopped living my life, constantly thinking about sending that one email to label X or agency Y, working for the sake of saying it, now that I stopped doing this - though I still have to do some of those things because I really want to work in photography - in such a toxic way, there is no more tension. Of course, the paranoia, the wanting to do more and more, and the being dissatisfied always remain and I hope it will remain with me throughout my life, because that's what drives me to do different things, to want to experiment, to want to improve, but now the actual tension is no longer there.
Martina Cantore — What kind of artist are you?
Alma Longo: I like to capture the female body, its shape, its essence, its individuality. I like to challenge societal norms by playing with themes of eroticism and spectatorship. I consider my work to have a political aspect with a message and a strong emotion to convey. I try to create conversations about where we - as in society - draw the line between vulgarity and sensuality when looking at the nude body. I make art that has personal meaning to me, I use what I have experienced as a woman to show something in its authenticity and truest form. I always find myself changing labels, and limiting my art to a specific kind doesn’t do it justice. I could be a feminist artist, contemporary artist, portrait photographer, or all the above, I have a niche but no limitations.
Martina Cantore — What kind of artist would you like to be?
Ilaria De Benedetto: The real answer is not a nice thing to say: I want to be an artist who can live off her art, but for that, you have to have extremely recognizable authorship and you have to bring something extremely innovative and that's something possessed maybe by one in one-thousand or one-million, I don't know, so let's say that's the dream, that's my ideal of artistry, of the life I would like to live, then the real world is different, however, since you asked nicely this is my answer….
