Spaces and Sculptures by Augusto De Luca

Description by Augusto De Luca

Augusto De Luca, born in Naples, July 1st, 1955, is an Italian artist and photographer.

After completing the classical studies, he has a degree in jurisprudence. In the mid-sixties his passion for photography has induced him to become a professional photographer.

He has dedicated himself to both traditional and experimental photography. He has practiced different photographic genres using the most varied materials.

The type of photography he uses is the minimalist one. De Luca photographer are the essential elements of the framed object. Alongside images of net realism, in their production appear others in which shapes and strokes are related to each other in unions inspired by metaphysics.

Internationally known, he has exhibited in many Italian and foreign galleries, as well as in Museums, institutional venues such as the Chamber of Deputies (Italy) in Rome, in different Institutes of Italian Culture and in University Venues abroad.

His photographs appear in different public and private collections such as the National Library of Paris, the Photographic Archive of the City of Rome, the International Polaroid Collection (USA), the National Gallery of Aesthetic Arts of China (Beijing), those of the Photography Museum of Charleroi (Belgium).

In the course of his career he has also made covers for records, advertising images and photographic books.

In 1987 he made the set design for the television program Samarcanda by journalist Michele Santoro. He has taught photography at the Montecitorio Circle of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy). The telecommunications company Telecom Italia has entrusted him with the task of illustrating four Telecom letters with images of the city of Naples, Paris, Dublin, Berlin and Brussels, with an edition of more than 19 million copies.

As a result of his books and specialized magazines, he has also made photographic services for celebrities from the world of culture and entertainment.

In the year 1996 has also received the prize of "Città di Roma" for the book "Roma Nostra" with the composer Ennio Morricone, the first prize for the photographs and the second for the poetry "Roma Amore", published in the book.
 

"An incipient Mother Man has always inhabited my deeper self; creativity has always been my companion… I have tried to express myself in a very definite style but by means of all kinds of materials and formats. I wish to discover how my own creativity unfolds under different circumstances…"

"The geometry serves as a grammar of expressive language in the image. The structural skeleton, the composition and the geometric layout provide a perspective from which one can read the image; otherwise we would do what Dadaists did when they put words in a little bag and then took them out at random in order to compose a poem."

"Great photography comes about at the right time but it also needs the right cut that enhances that precise moment … Photography must feed on both contents and form, if it gives up the one for the other it is not going to last."

"I possess multiple souls, that come out month in month out, year in year out. I am a photographer, a performer, a lawyer, a collector, a musician. I am all that, I do not throw anything away, I just allow my diverse souls to take turns…If you take pictures for the sake of other people, your true essence will never come out, you will end up with doing things others already did, just because you know that people like them …. My photographs convey my ideas, passions, monsters, who I am and what is on my mind."

"Light enhances but its shadow deletes, thus giving the picture its depth, its third dimension and its subtractive properties… I believe that commitment and technical skill can be achieved by means of one’s own will and study, while fantasy and passion are more valuable because they are innate and inescapably peculiar assets."

"I feel like a sailor, or better, like an explorer of the immense universe of art. The artist is a discoverer in search of the keys that open the door to emotions and feelings. Art is the place where rationality, fantasy, truth and fiction mix up in a detonating mixture."

"All my photographs seep through EMOTION, through the relationship I establish with the place I am portraying. Whenever I see something that captivates me, I start turning around it to find MY OWN frame. I work on myself and on the city at the same time."