In Canada, where roads often seem designed to follow the rhythms of nature, his passion for sport and open spaces came together almost instinctively through photographic research, beginning to shape his own visual sensitivity.

It’s between these two poles — Tuscany as origin and Canada as revelation — that his way of photographing takes form. An aesthetic founded on observation, on the body in motion, and on the constant presence of a natural background. In his images, outdoor sport isn’t only an athletic gesture; it becomes a relationship between a moving body and the space that receives it.

In this conversation, we retraced the paths taken by this young Tuscan photographer: an aesthetic education made of bicycles, woods, childhood, travel and sport, still only at the starting line of his photographic exploration.

Firenze to Vancouver, and Back

“Everything started with a study trip. I was still really young, and during my fourth year of high school I spent a semester in Vancouver, Canada. I lived there alone for six months, attending school and coming into contact with the Canadian and American sports system, the one we all sort of imagine: a context in which sport holds enormous importance. I was already coming from a sporting and competitive background here in Florence. I had always done sport: ten years of athletics, then I started triathlon, and later I moved into rugby. The bicycle, meanwhile, has always been present in my life, also because in my family we have always ridden bikes.

Towards the end of that trip, I took a photography workshop at school, mainly analog. It wasn’t an experience based on simply going out and shooting everything, but rather a slow, patient workshop, built mostly around visual exercises rather than photographs themselves. My daily activity during that period was walking through Vancouver: a city immersed in green, almost like a white dot inside the forests. I walked and observed. My main activity was precisely observation. That allowed me to stay out of the house, to be alone in nature. Those days also helped me understand myself better: how I behaved, what kinds of relationships I searched for, how I existed inside a place.

Then there was the connection with nature. Before coming back, my father and my brother joined me in Canada and we spent a month travelling by bicycle through British Columbia, with only bikes and a tent. Since then, whatever I do in terms of work, vision, or inspiration, I always return to Canada. Paradoxically, it is always present, even when I don’t mention it. It’s there. During that trip we were completely immersed in green, in a constant colour palette: green, blue sky, glaciers. And then there was nobody. There was an extreme silence.

At the end of that experience, when I returned to Italy, I physically felt a form of total autonomy. I think that’s what allowed me to move quite confidently toward photography. I graduated as a surveyor, so I was coming from a completely different path. But after finishing school, I understood that photography was what I wanted to do. As a constant source of inspiration, I always had my grandfather, who was never a professional photographer but was always passionate about travel photography and reportage. He travelled a lot around the world, taking some very beautiful photographs. He was an important push for me.”

Body & Nature

“I began studying photography. I spent a year at Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, and after finishing the course, the first experience I had was in a photojournalism agency. It was an experience that taught me how to move within the working world, even more than within the photographic world. At the same time, it made me understand that it wasn’t my path. It was not what I expected.

I wanted to go deeper into photographic exploration. I have a notebook that I call the ‘notebook of photographic attractions’. It is full of names: photographers, artists, graphic designers, magazines, brands, and everything that inspires me, that I like, and that I dream of collaborating with one day. To keep believing and to stay curious, I understood — also during my time in Canada — that the secret is to always surround yourself with new people, so that you can access different visions and set new goals. It is no coincidence that today I am focusing on the exploration of the body in motion through a refined, new vision, always trying to bring together space, the body that occupies it, and nature. Because in the photographs I make, nature must always be there. It is extremely important that this presence exists. My research is an exploration between body and nature. Even when it comes to photographs of cycling, running, fashion, or anything else, there is always a constant dialogue between a body and the space it occupies. And this is precisely what connects almost all of my projects.”

Outdoor Sports

“Most of the sports I photograph are probably the ones I approach because I feel them very close to my own experience, or at least closer than others. Sports I have physically tried myself. I really like making fatigue perceptible, making it visible. When I photograph, it almost feels as if I am getting back on a bicycle or going back to running. I feel similar sensations: stress, speed, fatigue. Paradoxically, even when I photograph, the timing is always very tight. You have to run, there is no time. Cyclists pass in a nanosecond: either you catch them, or you don’t. For me, this idea of moving fast is something that makes me feel good. I prefer to move quickly. I am quite an impulsive, explosive person. I prefer not to stop: shoot, watch the cyclist pass, get back into the car, look at the photograph. In the end, I am noticing that this working flow functions. I obtain results that I like, and that the people I work for also like.

I also think that cycling and trail running, unlike other sports, offer a much broader variety of images because they are outdoor disciplines. For me, context, nature, and landscape are very important. I have discovered that nature is a bit like having a studio backdrop that constantly changes colour. There is always something different behind the subject. In a single situation, this allows you to obtain an extremely wide variety of images.

Especially in cycling, which is the world I spend the most time in, there is also the whole before and after the race. That is a dimension that interests me a lot. I like seeing the exhausted cyclist. I am interested in telling not only the cyclist who is pedalling, but the drop of sweat, the blood from a wound, those details that reveal certain nuances of the sport. The old lady leaning out of the window and shouting as the Giro passes by, the man eating a sandwich and staining himself with sauce. These are images that take me back to my childhood, simply to country fairs, to people reaching events by bicycle. It is almost as if, within the group of cyclists I follow, I also see myself wanting to reach a nearby town.”

A Different Sensibility

“Today my two main jobs are photographer and educator with children. I work with an association near Florence that organizes workshops for primary and middle school children. I mainly work with primary schools. The workshops I lead take place exclusively in natural settings. Through the contact between the children, nature, and the relationship between me, them, and the environment, I believe I have developed a different kind of sensitivity. This experience has certainly been one of my main sources of inspiration. My editorial project for Marangoni was actually born inside a workshop with children. I was working as an educator and, at the same time, taking photographs. I completed both the workshop with them and my year at Marangoni while creating my first photographic project, which told the story of these children wandering through the woods almost like cyclists following a road. They collected little pieces of wood that, for them, became a sword, a flag — objects transformed by that gaze only children can have. 

Deep down, I still feel like a child myself. When I travel for work, during sporting events, when I follow teams or professional athletes, I feel little among them. Thinking back to the way I work with children, I believe I have a very natural, effortless approach. I feel close to them, and for this reason the combination of photography and education has been successful: they are two worlds much closer than they might seem. Also aesthetically. For example, rather than taking the easiest path, children almost always choose the most difficult one. This forces you to find different points of view and angles, which is something I also do when I photograph races. I am not someone who plans everything. It is the same approach I use, and used, with children.”

An Aesthetic Research

“For me, it is very important to be able to transmit to those who look at my images the fatigue, the joy, the pain, the sensations that I experienced as a photographer in that moment, and that the athlete experienced at the same time while performing. But perhaps, even when the photographs are meant to tell the story of a sporting event or physical effort, what I search for most is the aesthetic of the image. For me, when I get to post-production, the most enjoyable moment begins — the moment when I truly feel inside the photograph. Returning to an image, cropping into a detail, finding the right colour, the one that conveys a certain mood to me: that is where I feel I am truly expressing my gaze.

Today, especially in cycling, I am very interested in the aesthetic image, even when it does not directly explain what is happening. I think, for example, of the silhouette of cyclists riding in a line, all aligned, perhaps dark, almost in shadow, without even being able to understand which team they belong to. But that’s not important. It’s that sensation that arrives. For me, it is almost like a painting. It’s not easy to keep up, to find something that someone else is not already doing, because today everyone can do anything. Everyone can take a photograph, everyone can produce images. But I think the difference lies in the sensations you feel while doing things. That is the part that belongs to no one else. 

It’s all a question of gaze, of what I see. Whether they are images of cycling, dance, or any other context. My father is a tree climber, so he climbs trees with ropes, and I made a project about him and a group of guys who work on trees. Even photographing them, for me, the colours of the ropes and the carabiners attached to the harness had aesthetic potential. Trees are a constant in my life. When I move around, I am obsessed with them, especially their forms. I probably associate them with the body too, with a body that assumes particular shapes. Since I was a child, also through my father’s work, I have always been close to trees, from different perspectives. Then there is a concept my father has always repeated to me: the tree is the only living being that is born, lives, and dies in the same place. It is not a banal idea. For this reason, the tree is an important figure for me.”

Travel Through Sports

“So far, I have mainly photographed cycling, but at this moment I would be very happy to photograph any sport. Every sport exists within its own precise cosmos, and this gives you the possibility to tell its story in a specific place: whether indoors, outdoors, at sea, in the desert, in the mountains, on a circuit. The dream I have is, in a way, what I am already living now: travelling through sport. I am very happy to have the possibility of following a team at the Giro d’Italia this year, also because the Giro, stage after stage, always crosses different places. You start in one place and arrive in another, then you leave again, from the sea to the mountains. I really like having this variety, because for me it is important to keep changing, to have different stimuli, to experience something new every day. I believe this is fundamental.

In the future, however, I do not necessarily see myself in Italy as a working reality. Not only for professional reasons, but also because when I go to other places, whether linked to cycling or not, I feel there are more stimuli, more opportunities, more encounters. Especially for young people like me, who are always looking for something new.”