Photographer Alessandro Furchino Capria on cats, consumerism and digital deserts

It’s a decade since Alessandro Furchino Capria became a photographer, and 2023 signifies the beginning of a new chapter following his recent move from Milan to London. Furchino Capria describes recent years as full of travel, research, and making mistakes – all of which have been valuable parts of his creative development. Here, the photographer discusses hyperconsumerism, normality, and bringing his astute eye to our February 2023 Issue Best of S/S 2023 story. 

Wallpaper*: Describe your style and process

Alessandro Furchino Capria: I like to interact with what I have nearby and keep the result as simple and direct as I can without adding too many elements to the pictures. To me, everything has to go straight to the point. I prefer a subtractive process to an additive approach because it helps me to keep my mind awake.

W*: How did you approach our Design Awards Issue Best of S/S 2023 story?

AFC: When I met Jason [Hughes, Wallpaper’s fashion director], we spoke about keeping the shoot close to my way of seeing things and adding simple objects to the pictures, without overloading everything. I thought that having some plastic-packed fruit could reinforce the idea of having a simple symbol of hyperconsumerism, as well as the Coke can. Through the cat, I tried to reconnect everything with normal life, [and] with the daily routine of existence. I [also] worked with the other props we had in the studio, using them [but] avoiding their main functions to overturn their everyday meaning. 

W*: What do you think is the most interesting thing happening within photography now?

AFC: There are a lot of great authors out there and this is very helpful for the development of photography. I like the idea that one day, the old-school way of thinking about having always one great master above others will be finally over and we will start to approach society as an entity made by a lot of people, without having the necessity of having a ‘god’.

W*: What’s on your radar? 

AFC: Recently, an old article came up again in my reading list and I have read it again. It’s an old open discussion from Vinton Gray Cerf, an American Internet pioneer who urged people to think about printing their treasured photos and not relying on storing them as memory files. This is just a small part of the discussion, but it’s always something that's important to me – the fragility of the technologies we use every day [and] the way we can risk losing our personal data and leave a ‘digital desert’ around us.

W*: What’s next for you this year? 

AFC: With my partner, I’ve started to develop an independent publishing house called Continent Editions [through which] we published my latest book Plastic Bags. In the spring, we will also launch an annual magazine, in London. It will be about outside spaces and the first issue is about urban parks. We had the opportunity to involve a lot of great photographers.

1.alessandrofurchinocapria.com