Stebra – nature, magic and mystery

He approaches the world of art at the age of 12, starting to paint landscapes in oil on canvas, totally self-taught. At 18 he builds a darkroom where he develops and prints images in black and white, always self-taught. He favors a predilection for portraits, for the psychological and introspective implications that he entails. After about ten years he runs out of subjects willing to be portrayed and abandons photography, to cultivate interests in the literary field.
With the advent of social media, which allow you to get in touch with a multitude of people, he resumes taking pictures with a digital camera. Initially his style is that of old black and white images, influenced by the photography of Brandt, Saudek, Gibson and Fonteyne, then he opens up to color and approaches painting, his first love. Crucial to this transformation is the meeting with Kusterle, which will greatly influence him. The shooting technique of him is very simple: he uses a bare wall as a background and a single light source, giving up the magic of light. He builds or collects in the woods the accessories with which he “dresses” people, exploring three themes: nature, Flemish painting and the Gothic-surreal. He prefers not to shoot outdoors to deprive the images of any enrichment due to the beauty of the environment, clothes or accessories, looking for a sparse and poor photograph. The simplicity of the shooting phase is offset by the complexity of the post-production, the cornerstone of his expressive technique.

https://www.instagram.com/stebrra/