Profiling Photographers: Alessio Trerotoli

Gulf Photo Plus has partnered with a photographer to produce PopUP GPP Berlin's visual campaign. Italian-born Alessio Trerotoli's series "Urban Melodies" caught our attention from the get-go. Travelling the world, he photographs the world's most modern metropolises, from New York to Paris and, conveniently, Berlin. 

By juxtaposing different images, Alessio aims to show a usual image in a conceptual way, where everything is duplicated, the lights and structures multiply and create an entirely new vision of urban life. The process is infinitely complex. We spoke with Alessio in order to glean more insight into his working method.

GPP: Your work almost blurs the distinction between photograph and illustration. How would you describe your style?
Alessio Trerotoli: I try to create, by superimposing different pictures, an abstract representation of urban landscapes and contemporary life from modern metropolis like Rome, New York, Paris, Berlin and many others. By juxtaposing different images, I would show an usual image in a conceptual way. I like to think that I can do a sort of abstract street photography.
 

GPP: Could you take us through the creative process— how long does it take you to create an Urban Melody? How many photographs do you work with to produce the final image?

Alessio Trerotoli: It depends. Sometimes I finish a new “Urban Melody” in thirty minutes, working with four or five different images of the same subject, but sometimes I work on it for two or three days, looking for the right combination of images. Superimposing photos is an art that needs creativity, fantasy, curiosity and, most of all, lots of patience. It’s like a puzzle, an enigma to solve; a solution exists, the right combination exists, but we have to find it. There are no preset rules, only the rules that we decide to impose: for example, when I finish a new work I always think: “Wow, I like it!”. But the day after I watch it again and I think “It sucks, I have to improve it!”. Waiting for a day to check how really is my last work is just one of my rules.
 

GPP: Urban Melodies is comprised of images from New York, Paris and Italy, to name a few; do you intend on adding to the series or is it now complete?
Alessio Trerotoli: Yes, I’m constantly realizing new works of this project, I really like to work on it and I think I’ll go on with it for a lot of time, but it’s not the only project of my life, I always try to have new ideas. I would like to travel in new places and realize new Urban Melodies. This year I went in Portugal for the first time and I was really happy to have the opportunity to create new works there, because every place has its own music, its own melody, and I’m really motivated to put something of it in a picture.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not”. 

GPP: What is it about a particular location in any given city that attracts you most? Is it your intention to change the viewer's perspective of some of the world's most familiar places?
Alessio Trerotoli: I absolutely love the street, the stories that every corner and every building can tell. I need to search the soul of a place, I mean, what that a place can tell me. Through my photographs I try to catch the real soul of a street or a building, with something that belongs to its history and in the same time to its daily life. I like to take pictures in some of the world’s most familiar places, trying to catch a different image of it, but I also like to take pictures in less famous places, in little alleys or in the suburbs. There is always something interesting in a place, we only need to “listen” its melody with the eyes. In my life I always try to look for something beautiful around me and I think that I try to put something beautiful in my pictures: in my “Urban Melodies” you can find beautiful a traffic jam or a building in ruin, so maybe it’s possible to find beauty everywhere. Once I read a quote that is perfect: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not”.
 

GPP: Besides urban landscapes, what else inspires your work? 
Alessio Trerotoli: Urban landscapes are my great inspiration, but usually when there is someone that interacts with them. People really attract me: I could spend hours observing people, and if you check every picture I’ve taken, there is always a person or more. Street photography is very important to me: What I love about it is that, unlike studio or architecture photography, if in that moment you hadn’t been there, that picture would never have existed. If you had chosen another street or if you had stopped to look at your smartphone, such picture would never have existed. The fact to be there, to have taken this picture, somehow makes you feel a little like a special human being.

Discover more about Alessio's work here.
 
We hope to see you in Berlin this October for an unforgettable weekend of photography learning, inspiration and fun! Tickets are currently on sale at the special, early-bird rate of just €299 (offer ends Sep 29). Book here.