Christian Tagliavini: Ritratti Perfetti

As usual, while looking for some inspiring work online, I found a new gemstone. This time it was Christian Tagliavini and his series of work “1503”. After doing some research on his work and finding his “Dame di Cartone,” “Cromofobia” and “Aspettando Freud,” I couldn’t wait to talk to him! He was also featured in the 500 photographers blog by Pieter Wisse.

I contacted Christian by email and while waiting for his response, I went to Houston, TX for a couple days. I stopped by the Contemporary Museum of Art and guess whose photo was on the spread of the first book I picked at the Museum store? Sure enough, it was Christian’s image of one of his exquisite Damme di Cartone :) I assume the Law of Attraction works…

Christian is an Italian/Swiss graphic designer who currently lives in Switzerland. He does graphic design for a living and makes photography to nourish his soul. He moved to Switzerland because there are more opportunities for his business and life quality.

What is admirable about Christian is his humbleness and determination. He taught himself photography and graphic design. His photographs are unique, eye-catching, and memorable. The quality of his work is amazing, the models are authentic, and the sets are designed and hand-crafted by Christian. Yet, he is extremely modest!

Christian is inspired by and admire the work of great photographers, Luigi Ghirri, Arturo Ghergo, Larry Clark, and Erwin Olaf. He says about his photography, “I'm only a beginner…I see myself as a craftsman and I’m not feeling like an artist.” He made his first photo series in 2006 called “Aspettando Freud” ("Waiting for Freud"). Then, he had a few publications in the “important magazines, two group exhibitions, but the big one [hasn’t arrived] yet.” I noticed that very talented people are often fairly humble and approachable with no shadow of a conceit or arrogance. I was happy to discover that Christian is one of these people.

Christian is aspiring to do commercial work for advertising agencies and to have more presence in galleries.When we chatted about his future plans, he said he would eventually like move to a big city such as New York.

Now it has become my tradition to give some practical tips to creative folks at the end of each post. Here are some ideas from Christian how to recruit models.


Christian has a Casting Call page on his website. I am surprised how very few photographers and figurative artists have this option on their websites. Christian confessed, though, that he receives a lot of submissions from all over the world including the USA, Australia, and many European countries but not much from Switzerland. Therefore, he sometimes approaches people on the street if he believes that people have an interesting appearance. Facebook could be also a nice resource to recruit models (especially, in the USA).
   
I wish Christian good luck with his new ideas and am looking forward to see his new work.