What they say about me

Portraiture is the hallmark of this young photographer, with his sharp, empathetic gaze, which captures the essence of his subjects. He complements his portfolio with harmonious, well-composed street scenes, rendered with surprising light. Black and white is his medium, which he uses to evoke sensations, dreamlike and minimalist atmospheres, highlighting expressions, light, and shadows that create a decidedly strong visual impact. It's inevitable to find parallels with the poetics of the films of Frank Capra, Fellini, and Billy Wilder, albeit tinged with more contemporary influences.

Giordano Rispo’s creative talent grew up in a fertile environment. He is the son of an artist, but he does not say so out of shyness or modesty, almost as if stating it might diminish his value when he introduces himself to someone. One might think everything is easy for a boy whose father is an accomplished actor, yet the opposite is often true. A parent like that casts a shadow, and that shadow does not always provide shelter, even though he surely wished it would. Growing up, he must have learned to work twice as hard, to avoid those who underestimate him by relying on clichés, to study, experiment, and bring clarity to confusion in order to discover his own unique and original voice—shaped by the talent that surrounded him since childhood.

He loves the faces of the world he encounters, framing familiar ones, freezing in a single shot moments that are affection, memory, and unbreakable bonds. He brings this capacity for interaction to casual relationships, too, when he wanders the streets of Naples, his hometown, or travels far away, returning with close-ups like those that make up this African portfolio. They recall the close-ups of Éric Lafforgue, Pieter Hugo, or Seydou Keïta’s 'Portraits of Bamako', yet for him they are still experiments that, over time, will lead him to his uniqueness. I'm fairly certain that Giordano Rispo is not (and will not be) just a photographer. The fire and curiosity that drive him push him to explore in various directions: communication, directing, acting. Photography, however, is an expressive language that clearly suits him and will guide him, becoming something important and fundamental in his journey.

Barbara Silbe - journalist and curator specializing in photography

Introduction to the artist

Giordano Rispo's art moves between cinema and photography, narrative and suspension. The director's gaze emerges clearly: the image is never a mere document, but a carefully considered frame, constructed like a film still containing an invisible before and after. The shot, taken in Jambiani Village in Tanzania, focuses on the face of a child with vast, penetrating eyes. The black and white concentrates attention on the essential: the gaze. Light sculpts, models the features and reveals a depth that transcends the subject's age. The eyes become both mirror and question, opening and plea. As Cartier-Bresson said: "The human face is the great landscape that every artist must explore", so Giordano embraces this lesson, pushing it toward an ethical intensity. The title introduces an additional dimension: darkness is not merely a matter of lighting, but a symbolic space. It is a place of uncertainty, collective responsibility, and encounter that occurs beyond the visible surface. In this choice one perceives an echo of humanist photography in a contemporary tension that interrogates the viewer about their own role. Giordano opts for tonal subtraction, moving toward an introspective dimension. Ci vediamo nel buio thus becomes an implicit pact between subject and observer, an invitation to recognize oneself in the shared shadow of humanity.

— Critica by Margutta

What is Giordano Rispo's vision beyond mere gaze? What can be glimpsed? We Westerners are accustomed to seeing in order to understand, to investigate, to scrutinize and probe reality. But in doing so we fragment it and grasp only frames, like the colorful tiles of a mosaic. We lack deep vision — the kind that, throughout the East, is known as the vision of the Buddha. It goes beyond, perceives the deeper reality, the non-illusory one, the whole, which encompasses both the object beheld and the subject who beholds. Ci vediamo al buio, this magical shot by Giordano, at once intuitive and self-aware, includes the other. Indeed, it projects itself into the other, looks into the other's eye. Darkness is a magnificent medium and at the same time a thetic act, by which the 'I' without the 'you' can never become 'me'. That this 'you' is a beautiful child moves us — not only because all children move us, but because in the child's eye the adult is reflected, the very one who deeply contemplates the essence of the child. It is a magnificently pedagogical photograph, and for this all the more artistic, because it is ethical and aesthetic at once. Penetrating sight, one of the Buddha's attributes, embraces and knows in an instant the entire reality of phenomena. It is, precisely, a click of total wisdom. And beauty.

— Loredana Ferolla, writer