Interview by Silvia M.C. Senette - Photographs Nicola Gnesi

“The sea is a presence you truly feel only when you leave: it’s an embrace, ready to gather every thought.” Filippo D’Eugenio, born in 1994, is a soul caught between mountain peaks and salt air. Born in Trento but raised in Forte, he left engineering during the lockdown to turn reality into images. Today, he lives in Milan and has established himself as a still life photographer, yet with the project Salt and Sea, he has laid bare his distance from the sea. Through his words, he explores the visceral bond between the poetics of objects and the aesthetic of a Versilia that, for him, stubbornly remains a small town. Raised in Forte, now photographing the Dolomites and living in Milan – when you frame the coastline, is it with the hunger of someone returning home or the detachment of someone who belongs to the city? “I will never feel like a man of the metropolis: Milan moves at full speed and fascinates me, but I belong to the slower rhythm of the coast. When I shoot in Forte, I step into the perspective of those who live there, including my parents, even though Salt and Sea was born from becoming, in a way, an orphan of the sea. It’s a gaze filled with nostalgia: I try to capture what I miss. I feel the sea within me, on my skin, like salt – we are inseparable.” Your aesthetic draws on the pastel tones of Martin Parr and the precision of Nicolas Polli’s still life. How do you avoid the trap of the vintage postcard in a setting as “ready-made” as Forte? “The secret lies in the detail. While postcards offer wide, rhetorical views, I focus on the textured detail. Still life has taught me to look at objects in an original way: I bring that rigor to the pier, among fishermen and surfers. I move away from the center, an open-air boutique, to seek out places close to my heart, like the Versiliana. I use the zenith light of midday to flatten shadows and convey a sense of positivity that isn’t sepia nostalgia, but something alive and present.” If you had to construct, in the studio, an image that captures the essence of Forte using only objects and light, what would we see on the table? “I would choose a sand bucket like the one I used as a child, but flooded with my ‘makeup palette’ of pastel colors. I would use a pure vertical light and white reflectors on every side to completely open up the shadows. It would be a picture that speaks of simplicity and of a light that hides nothing. It would represent my Forte: a place that still resists as a town, despite the advance of major brands, and that for me remains an unconditional love.”