WHO?
My name is Stefano Mirabella, born 1973 in Rome, the city where I still live and photograph. For many years, I worked in the television sector for a few satellite thematic channels. But always, photography has been my greatest passion, since the day of my first communion when my uncle gave me a Yashica mf2 that I still keep with great care. In photography, I was trained in the best schools in Rome and then I followed a very personal journey, to the continuous discovery of authors and genres, I studied a lot and started to collect numerous photographic books.
In 2012, I started practicing street photography with passion and dedication and just a few years later thanks to winning a competition organized by Leica Camera Italia, I had the opportunity to collaborate with this mythical and prestigious company, a collaboration that still continues today. In the meantime, photography became my work; I commenced teaching and sharing my knowledge about it. At the moment, I teach for one of the biggest schools in photography Officine Fotografiche, and for the Leica Akademie Italia.
I had the possibility to exhibit my photos in various galleries and to participate in numerous festivals. From 2018, together with two other photographer colleagues, I have been taking care of the organisation of the Italian Street Photo Festival that takes place every year in April, in Rome.
WHAT?
For me, photography is the synthesis between representation of reality and the capacity to transcend it. Through street photography, I rediscovered my city, and I fell in love for the second time, rediscovering the beauty of the people I meet, its light, and some incredible glimpses. The need to look around with different eyes and spirit are the greatest gift that photography can give you, it is a real unique occasion.
On the street, I constantly search for relations between elements and subjects, trying to see and stop instances that are interesting and particular. I constantly take into consideration what places can offer in terms of visual input and pre-existences; I am fascinated by those layered images, with more levels and more subjects.
WHERE?
I strongly believe in the “mission” to tell about a place in which one lives. In my case, the love for Rome is unconditional, I was born and have always lived here, and right here it is my intention to continue to do photography. I have always believed that the greatest “challenge” is to try to see an old and very well-known place with new and different eyes. My objective is, and always will be, to tell about my city. The principles that guide my photographic research are abstraction and the focus on small stories, they subtly screech with the desire for “documentation” of the place where I live…I am still looking for a certain balance.
I prefer the city centre and railway stations, busier places where more occasions occur and where it is easier to tell of moments, instances, and little stories.
WHEN?
I started late in dedicating myself seriously to photography, in 2003, I attended the first training courses in an excellent school, the teacher was an established photojournalist and a great communicator, I discovered authors and ways of communicating that marked me. Social reportage and travel photography characterised my first approach, later in 2012, I discovered street photography, which coincided with a parallel path dedicated to change the vision of many points of view.
Then from that moment every occasion was a good one to go out on the street and photograph, in the last years I am photographing a little less often, but always with the same passion.
WHY?
To feel good, because it is one of the things that I manage better in life, because as Henry Cartier-Bresson: said: “ Photography…in reality is a necessity of solitude accompanied by the need to not isolate oneself”. Because without photography, I would be a profoundly different person.
