Paolo Massimo Testa was born in Alzano Lombardo, in the province of Bergamo. The mountains, climbing, skiing. The father who gives him the first compact, the shots of nature, the desire to document reality as it is. A clean imprinting, a daily newspaper without too many frills that Paolo leaves to move to Milan and study Philosophy. A change of scene that makes him more rebellious, in the city of fashion, where he doesn’t care about fashion. After traveling experiences in Europe, in 2012 Paolo began his studies at the New York Film Academy and moved to the Big Apple, where he still works. A technical preparation and a renewed culture slowly begin to mix with a new lifestyle. In New York Paolo assists many teachers, including Max Vadukul. It’s time for fashion photography, a first successful business chapter that does not feel its own. It is when Paolo rediscovers climbing that he understands what his passion is. He gets back in touch with what surrounds him in a more intimate way and understands that he must follow his vocation for reportage photography. This is where the climbing and fishing series are born, daily shots, unique portraits, unrelated images that convey a reality experienced from within. A production of great personality that leads him to tell an interior research and turned to its context, to produce the most recent and eloquent The Life After. Paolo does not define himself as an artist, but a craftsman. He does not want to manipulate, nor necessarily tell, his photography is not construction. Sometimes it can be a narrative, at others it is simply and a moment worth telling. Paolo offers us naked reality, in its essence, and manages to reach whoever sees it, to transmit his experience. Paolo Massimo Testa’s photography is a simple photograph, without retouching. A photograph that must be observed, that needs its time and that slowly reveals itself. It makes us stop for a moment, hits us and bothers us, leaves us a weird smile on us and sometimes doesn’t solve half of our questions. Exactly as if we were observing for a moment more what really surrounds us.
