Interview: Alessia Rollo's Magical Realism

Portrait of the Artist

Tell us about yourself, how did you become an artist?

I moved to Dublin when i was 23 just after my degree at Univerity. My english was really poor so i could not communicate that much with people. I started to take pictures in order to explore the city i was and to have a visual support to share my impression with people. 

After one year i decided to move to Madrid to study photography in a much more accademic way.

What is your background?

I born in South Italy, I think my very first source of inspiration were the paintings in the church I was obliged to go when i was a child. I learn a lot about composition and how to create visual narrative. I think it influence me a lot this "magic realism" i grow up. It influenced as well the way i photograph: i escape from strict reallity an i usaully try to create ambiguity

What ideas interested you in the beginning of your practice, which ideas have you continued to explore, and where have they led you?

At the beggining of my career i think i was much more focus on the formal aspect of photography. I was looking for strong visual images: the estethic side was very important for me. In the last 5 years i shift the point on the content and i'm investigate a lot the potencial of the medium to create visual alternative to stereotyped topics.

Who were and are the biggest sources of your inspiration?

When i was young the writer Dante was a big sourse of inspiration for me: his book Divina Commedia mark a lot my immagination. As well Italo Calvino for his ability to mix histoy and fiction and create such stronge visual scene. 

Claudia Mollese,  Young and Talented Italian Filmmaker

I discovered photographers very late but now i'm very passionated about the work of Graciella Iturbide, Maya Daren or Lieko Shiga. I much more focus about a women perspective.

Frame of the Movie of Cecilia Mangini "Stendali'"

Where do you find inspiration?

I usaully like to collect think i found. I discover that befor to start a new project my unconscious is on allert and it start to focus on a certain reality or objects.  I realized that to work fine I need to be completely disconnected from everyday routine. I spend many days, weeks by my own then I work on my project. It’s like diving in yourself and for me it’s necessary to create silence and emptiness around myself to let get my thoughts getting together and later my imagination free to create a visual result.




Picture of My Working Progress Project About South Italy



 Luisa Rivera Painting Inspired to "One Hundred Years of Solitude"




Maya Daren, a Surrelist Film Director, Working on a Set




Picture of My Working Progress Project About South Italy




My Studio View

Is there are a single work, project, or series that is pivotal in your current trajectory?

I think Fata Morgana was a shifting point for me in my career. Starting from this serie i started to focus more on new documentarism and work on social topics. It's a project about migration, my willingness to create a visual complexity around these topics so relevant in the contemporary European scenario but as well to think about the role of photographers, which are powerful producers of meanings, ideas and opinions.

Picture of My Working Progress Project About South Italy

How did it begin? and how did it evolve?

I’ve started to work Fata Morgana project in 2015 because as photographer I was feeling irritated by the pictures that show with too much superficiality scenes of migrants in the aim to reach our coast.

I decided to set up other photos from my point of view and esthetic: I’ve used some watermelons to speak metaphorically about people who are fleeing their homes in search of a better life. During the next 2 years I’ve continued working on other topics connected with this phenomena as the clandestine migration and the exploitation of seasonal workers, offering a new conception of them, esthetically less dramatic but not less significant.

Fata Morgana includes portraits of foreign people who live and work in a legal or illegal way in my region, descriptive and evocative pictures of some elements of the landscape, still life of symbol of the exploitation of seasonal workers and some metaphoric component as the mirage of Albanian Mountains.

This project is a storytelling in between realty and fiction: I’ve tried to create an alternative vision and increase curiosity to know much more about the ones we consider different from our social and cultural identity.

Image That Marked My Memory. Vlora Boat Arrive on South Italian Coast in the 1991full of Albanian Fleeding Away Thier Country

Collage I Realized With Pictures  (Some Mine Some Not) to Understand the Visual Structure of My Serie Fata Morgana




First Picture I Realized of the Series. I Just Saw Alan Kurdi Image and I Wanted to Create a New Visual Possibility of Storytelling About Migration




Picture I Realized for the Series Which I Excluded Because it felt too Artificial




Still Life of the Series. At One Point I Decided to Mix Fiction and Reality in the Series




Picture I Took During an Inspection in My Region





Picture I Took One Year Later in a Similar Place




Alessia Rollo the Book I Realized in 2018 With the Series of Pictures I Shot From 2015 to 2017


What are you working on now?

I currently working on a project that investigate the stereotypes about south italy and how photography and cinema in the '50th create a kind of arcaic, underdevelopped,  superstitiious idea of this place. Still very in progress.

If you could go back in time to the very beginning of your art practice and give your younger self a single piece of advice what would it be?

Maybe  to buy a car when I was 19 instead to pay the taxes to the italian university (which was quite pointless) and explore the world with the photographic camera


About the Artist