The Photographer Whose Creations Entwine Philosophy And Masculinity

While we’re confined to our four walls, there has never been a greater onus on shifting distractions into reflections, and reflections into reality. And we’re all familiar with the transportive power of the mind, and how it can hover back in time, or even far, far away. Pretty spectacular, surely? Well, when it comes to the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature—as enchanting as it sounds—its resonance swirls through our identity with great effect.

Milan-hailed creative Giuseppe Morello offers one such example: his visual grounding peeks out in hazy and atmospheric portraiture which, to some extent, is reluctant to make a viewer’s experience easy to decode. Masculinity is the crux of Morello’s practice, blurring the lines between abstract and modern by stripping back the streams of toxic manhood, all leading to a gentle vision. This narrative offers two paths: a complex one and an easier alternative. The first is constructed around revered Ancient Classics—particularly Latin and Greek literature—where theorists like Thales of Miletus, Heraclitus and Virgil’s epic Aeneid incorporated nature into popular culture and its holistic dimension, testifying to its own specific approach to reality. This sentiment was called eclecticism, a movement that bestowed a different conception of beauty that no longer derived from order but from utility. From this concept came a new and a more pragmatic vision of reality, which argued that nature sists in conjunction with our impression of identity.

“Nature shapes innovation, where we return to a wild state of distorted narratives and ancestral meanings,” reflects Morello. “Perhaps in search of true intimacy, a reason to stop hunting, in the hope of finally feeling fulfilled.” Such commentary ties into his latest photo series, in which the relation between tender masculinity and nocturnal animals becomes the prime focus: “Instinct leads us to spread our wings, to show ourselves like birds of prey, all while projecting images to seduce or repel like butterflies spreading their wings.”

Morello references Paul Kooiker as one of his key influences, who saw in the association between female nudity and animal photography the perfect anecdote to represent it, primarily moved by the need to make the viewer feel part of what he scrutinises. Unlike Kooiker's perspective, though, the man-meets-animal association of this project is based on metaphorical qualities that articulate the comparison between two types of nocturnal animals, both driven by instincts. “I deem the relationship between men and animals an allegory of human relationships,” reckons Morello, “where conquering a life means adhering to one's desires: in my latest series, this is translated in holding an owl on a fist, where I captured a boy whose face is marked by white stripes of a projected image. That gives him a tribal gaze associated with a new-born owl, covered in fur and without its first feathers, in the hands of the breeder.”

Besides, Morello recounts the collection of New York-based photographer Ryan McGinley, titled Animals: an oddly beautiful anthology where the animal acts as the protagonist and the nude body as a frame, a base, or a means of irony. It anchors this set of works to Morello’s own oeuvre. However, “the focal point of my production will always be the male body,” he says. “The connection between sculptural figures, shyness, intimacy and the physical reality of nature has left me besotted through the years. It’s liberating.”

To this end, the series juxtaposes images of masculinity and expression with different forms of identity that aren’t confined by a firm ideal. Somewhere down the line, after the initial reckoning with Ancient Classics, it’s safe to say Morello’s practice falls in perpetual flux with the turbulence of the modern world (case in point: amid the blossoming wave of photographers willing to dismantle toxic masculinity, he offers new insights by working on sculptural forms). Of course, in a system where conventions are constantly challenged, his vision could be viewed as a mimicry of the men of our times. But his natural and sculptural take provides the building blocks to innovative photographs, questioning the historical language from which they originate. What’s striking is the aesthetic of the images, too, which seems to straddle the organic and the surreal with hushed palettes set against brighter hues, creating a poignant gaze.

Like a hurtling force of nature, what impelled Morello to explore humans and animals is the breadth of our soul—still shaped by social constructs—and a lust of freedom. “It’s an open view, but not completely,” he says. “And despite its knocked by challenges, we must not look away.”

For more updates on the artist’s work, visit www.gmorello.com.