MARCO RUGGIERO

Life has afforded me unique experiences and opportunities. From childhood in post-war Italy, where I was born in 1944, to San Francisco college-student in the vibrant 1960s, by way of adolescence in Caracas, Venezuela, my life in Southern California, as a photographer and family man completes the picture.

Photography has always been my passion and people have been at the forefront; photographs of men, women and children, and crossing many borders from Venezuela to Vancouver to Venice, and in the States from Beverly Hills to San Francisco, Chicago and New York City. Notwithstanding the diverse cultures and locales, people convey feelings to me that no other aspect of life does. As result, with my images I continue to convey those feelings. However, rather than trying to capture them in portraitures or controlled environments, which tend to result in more staged and less revealing of their personality and being fortunate to be able to make people very confortable with me, I have been able to capture them in spontaneous moments, reflected on a multitude of surfaces, and in a play of light and shadows. Lastly, the human presence is palpable even when the images are void of their physical being.

My work has been influenced the most by such artists as Henry Cartier-Bresson; Robert Frank; Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, among others. As a result, I shoot primarily film. My preference is B & W and the camera that I use more frequently is a Leica M6 and a 50mm lens. Robert Capa once said that:"…If the image is not good, you are not close enough...!" I find B & W to better reflect the feelings and the mood of the people that I photograph and the moment that I have captured.