Introduce yourself, name,age, location.
I'm Francesco Paolo Catalano, I'm 34 years old and I live in Palermo (Sicily)
Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?
I began to realize photos after studing the gender and queer theories. The self portraiture and the photographic portraiture were a natural needing to comunicate about the cultural construction of identity and personality. I don't know if I'm an artist. I only know that since 2006 I changed my "path of life" to describe my psychological observations and my past obsessions.
Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.
I strive for the absence of vanity and cultural prejudice. Gender is a photographic construction. This is the starting point of my photographic work: to translate the cultural relativism in photography, through a fashion, surrealism and cinematographic language.
Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?
Music is like the cinematic and literary inspirations. Sade, Prince, Depeche Mode, David Sylvian, are among the artists who listen.
How would you describe your work to someone?
My photographs are like the drawings of my infancy. Photography allows me to tell a part of who I am, what I was and my attitude to perfmorming in the mirror. My work is my definition of beauty, silence and observation.
Influences?
Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Grace Jones, Lisetta Carmi in Italy, Diane Arbus, Betthina Reims, Quentin Crisp, and my personal queer icon Patty Owens. I'm struck by people without fear of exposure and repetition over time.
Describe your process for creating new work.
I write my dreams. I note dialogues, frames of movies, memories and missed emotions. My portraits are often the beginning of my projects: "raw data" on which to argue for future portraits and stories.
What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?
It's important, I think, to know about marketing and targeted advertising. To realize a professional portfolio and to offer itself to art galleries or magazines in function of specific projects.
What are you really excited about right now?
The idea of inventing stories and characters is really exciting for me, like the photographic process itself and the back stage of a performance. The ice cream makes me happy right now.
What do you love most about where you live?
Palermo is a city with a rare photographic light: hot, muggy and sand. This is one of the few reasons why I currently live in Palermo.
Best way to spend a day off?
Run, walk, look for places with trees and watch the people on the street. Eating outdoors and search for the serendipity.
Upcoming shows/ projects?
Coming soon an exibition of mine curated by Laura Francesca Di Trapani in collaboration with Maurizio Veronese in Palermo at Spazio Cannatella, an Art Gallery in Palermo. An exibition about my queer icon-character Patty Owens and the cultural idolatry of a pop icon. In this period I'm publicizing my first job as art director for the music video
Jökking by Donato Di Trapani, based on a story of mine, Costanza. I'm writing for a next photographic theater project too.
Where can people see more of your work on the internet?
On flickr I have a photostream with portraits and another one with self portrait. I like tumblr too to show the complete works about a photographic shooting. My new tumblr is, for istance, dedicate to the Patty Owens portraits.
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