Nus Nous: A Photo Exhibition by Giuseppe Persia

Bellows camera and development on paper in black and white: the photography of Giuseppe Persia starts from these tools, solid and traditional, to give body to the suggestions of the human soul. The photographer, who was born in Lombardy but grew up in Abruzzo and lived in the Triveneto region, after years of reportage throughout Italy, arrived at the Nus Nous style (nude, in French, intellect, in ancient Greek) through a sudden intuition. 

Persia recounts: “I was looking at a bell pepper in the kitchen of my house and I saw a human body, the body of a woman. I photographed it, but in the picture I could not see the same thing; I tried and tried again until what I saw appeared”. “When I took my rolls of film to be developed, I was never satisfied with the result; so I thought of printing the photos myself,” Giuseppe says. 

Between 1971 and 1972, with a group of his peers, he formed the group of young photographers from Spilimbergo, the town in the province of Pordenone, where Persia had meanwhile gone to live and work as a career soldier. His first works were noticed by the neo-realist photographer Gianni Borghesan, who taught him to be serious. Giuseppe Persia recounts: “He was a man of other times, very elegant. He suggested that I continue with black and white, an advice I have followed all my life. When he didn’t like a photo, he would even tear it up. Of the interesting ones, he would frame the main elements with the help of blank sheets of paper. He taught me that a good photograph must show only a few subjects”.

For the past few years, Giuseppe Persia has been retired and totally dedicated to photography. “I continue to use the bellows camera and print on cotton paper with silver gelatin,” says Giuseppe. Photographic archives should also remain material; there is no point in reconstructing them in digital form because they lose all the characteristics and colors of the original photographs.” Three of Giuseppe Persia’s works are on display at the Kremlin Museum.