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Renato Rampolla

During the Covid-19 lockdown, Renato Rampolla, created Introspection, a departure in style, born of necessity.  Ordinarily a street and documentary photography,  Rampolla has used the confinement to re-visit his archive of monochrome images, creating introspective and emotional art in color and collage that is both connected to his earlier work and brand-new.

"The streets were empty and I needed an outlet to express myself. This series allowed me to create in solitude where I was used to connecting face to face with strangers on the street. This project required that I quickly teach myself how to use Photoshop, something I had wanted to learn more about but had put off.  The images in my "Introspection" series capture human emotion as an image: love, joy, pride, loneliness, anger, or belief in something bigger than ourselves. There’s a grit to the work. Urban graffiti, torn posters, backlit windows, walls, mark-making, anything with color and or texture is my form of abstract expression as a street photographer. I “paint” these layers over portraits or other figures I've captured while roaming the streets. The process is a composite of my figurative street portraits combined with layers of more abstract street photography. The experience is like a performance on a two-dimensional surface. Flash-perceptions of reality interact with raw emotions.

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