WallsOfMilano
by Giovanni "Gianfranco" Candida
I've been a Street Art photographer since 2006. My favourite action place is my hometown of Milano, where I feel part of the urban art movement.
Over the years, the name of my FB page, WallsOfMilano, created in 2015, has become my personal nickname, as I’m known by most artists.
My photography has always been "social" photography aimed at telling "marginal" realities.
Urban Art has fascinated me since the beginning because it is a form of art expressed on the street, outside the galleries, and is based on the principle of sharing rather than possession, on creative freedom, on being transgressive, democratic, popular, and ephemeral.
When I started recording the images I saw on the walls, in the streets of Milano, I used to take pictures of finished artworks. I didn't know any artists when I started, I was completely alien to that world!
Over time, as I developed trust and confidence in the artists, I began to focus my attention more on the act of painting itself, trying to convey the emotion of seeing a work of art take shape before my eyes.
I've often been called at night to rush and record some work that would have been, most likely, scratched off in the morning by authorities or by the landlord who owns the spot.
During the last years, my interest has expanded to subjects who, in the same way, are born and grow on the street but who are more in the frame of political initiatives and volunteer activities: not only artists with spray cans and rollers in hand, but also people in economic difficulty, students, social movements, and LGBTQ+ communities to tell the lives, emotions, and stories of those who are committed to building solidarity.
Whilst in the photography of Urban Art the choice of shooting in color was an obligation not to deprive the works of part of their emotional charge, in my new approach to social photography I decided to eliminate colors to focus attention on events and people.
Giovanni Candida is a street art photographer, but by profession, he is a manager in an important multinational company. He was born in 1958 and only became interested in street art in 2006. Wherever he travels, he takes photos of 'walls', but to give coherence to his work as a photographer and collector of street art and writing works, he has decided to focus on the city of Milan, where he lives. His Facebook page www.facebook.com/wallsofmilano is a point of reference for the Milanese street art scene. He has a very patient wife who tolerates the long days he spends with the young artists.
