When photographers take on filmmaking, aesthetics are often regarded with principal importance, while a sequential narrative comes second. As we introduce the celebrated Italian photographer Marco Sanges, I’d like to draw your attention to Circumstances. The unique series of monochrome photographs were initially collated for a picture book of the same title but later morphed into an award-winning movie.
Although he hails from Ostia, a romantic and historically significant district of Rome, the 52-year-old artist now resides in London. His early prominence as a photographer was buoyed by notable work in the fashion industry, with some of his imaginative shots featured in several magazines and national newspapers. Outside of freelance work, Sanges held longer-term roles working for Vogue Italia and Dolce & Gabbana.
After two decades of success as a published photographer and enjoying several worldwide exhibitions, Sanges began to work on narrative approaches to his art. The artistic short film Pondering of a Lonely Wonderer arrived on July 26th, 2008, as Sanges’ first directional credit in partnership with Alberto Bona, with whom he also co-directed Pondering of a Lonely Wonderer the following year.
Between these two projects, Sanges directed a six-minute film to present the photography found in his 2007 book Circumstances. Working again with Bona as his co-writer, Sanges compiled the photographs into an artistic film inspired by the silent movie era of the early 20th century.
“Greatly attracted to the cinema and in particular the luminous black and white films of the silent era, I create photographs in sequence,” Sanges commented on the project per his website. “Every sequence tells a unique, multi-layered story.”
“In this analogue project, I wanted to capture the power of characters, bigger than life being themselves without any restriction or regulation by the government,” he continued. “Instead, they choose to be free, revealing the various states of consciousness of the character and exploring the dualities between content and absence, space and surface. Be in a scene, as a scene in a film unfolds into a story.”
Circumstances involved a cast of models depicting various characters, including Casanova and the artists Uomo Bombetta and Salvador Dalí, the latter portrayed by Bona. For his directional command and unique conceptual display, Sanges won the ‘Best Art Fim’ award at the Portobello Film and Video Festival in 2008 and the ‘Best Experimental Film’ award at Saint Petersburg International Film Festival in 2009.
The below collection of photographs taken from Circumstances depicts some scenes and characters conjured by Sanges’ imagination. In the film, the evocative and detached reel is concluded appropriately with a quote by D. H. Lawrence: “I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts or my thoughts the result of my dreams.”
