Paolo Gallo had wanted to be an actor but turned into a professional advertising photographer instead. As it goes there is no vaccine against the bacillus of a histrionic personality so Gallo, who has been creating images in advertising for twenty years, becomes a photographer tout court and makes of this technique his main means of artistic expression. Paolo Gallo - who certainly is gifted with self-irony and adopted an actual cock as his logo - lives in Udine and struck us with his versatility and originality of perspective while we were surfing the net. This photographer knows his work well, his pictures range successfully from still lives to landscapes, from magazine and book covers to institutional business communication or fashion material. Gallo knows very well how difficult it is for an advert image to gain expressive autonomy: images in advertising 2006 are indeed justified by their marketing potential and consistency in mirroring the product, their strength being just as great as their power to impress the consumer's imagination. A photograph in advertising can, in fact, be beautiful and still entirely "wrong". Being a creator is not an easy job, in fact creativity itself is sometimes like a restless horse, it is difficult to ride it back to the enclosure of market rules. Competition is fierce and commonplace widespread, as a matter of fact advertising is often the kindergarten of commonplace itself, to which Paolo Gallo is insensitive by nature. The advertiser's vice of linking an image to a message takes a different turn in Gallo's work: his motivation subtly gets off the road of marketing to follow - in the artist's exhibitions - the impassable path of existence, where he brings his professionalism, intelligence, sensitivity and a sure originality of imagery. To all of this Gallo adds his love to perform, the heritage of his passion for the theatre and a wholesome way to keep his public entertained. In 1985 he began his career as an artistic photographer with the exhibition "Fotografie disgraziate - Unlucky photographs", a title - he says - "which haunts me to this day", a collection of 30 black-and-white pictures created "to get over an unhappy romance" and also, with a taste for provocation, because they represent the opposite of the happy pictures in advertising. Despite their title - an excellent advertising idea which made the exhibition tour Italy as well as foreign countries - these unlucky photographs are very happy. They contain a typical trait of Paolo Gallo's, one which characterises all his work, that is the successful transfusion of thoughts into images. It is with this exhibition that the photographer from Friuli starts commenting on his creations, finding words to accompany the often complex train of thoughts, which supports the need to produce an image. Paolo Gallo is not much interested in aesthetic cunning and he gets irritated by computer virtuosity. He prefers to work with traditional tools, using double exposure rather than the "wonders" of Photoshop, above all he likes abounding in imagination, the human resource he finds most trustworthy. This is to be seen in his "Anima - Soul" exhibition in 1991, for which Gallo was awarded the "Giorgio Mondadori" silver plaque for photography. The collection consists of 30 black-and-white pictures - as he tells us - "images to illustrate a slim collection of poems by an author from Calabria, which have become the psychological self-analysis of some thoughts and behaviour of mine as well as of our society". This is further developed in "Spaventi - Scares", a wonderful essay on fear in the form of images, which come as a company calendar: twelve scarecrows, gaunt figures from country life, recreated by Paolo Gallo with extreme craftmanship and photographed with yet greater skill. Gallo's art is obvious when treating a serious and delicate subject matter, such as fear, and yet succeed in showing a light touch, an ironical vein as well as a deep insight into human feelings. Some of these images are accompanied by captions like: "a day spent in fear is a useful day", which explains the peculiarity of this artist's message. This advertising photographer, who had wanted to be an actor and a double bass player, has both the right intensity and lightness, Gallo keeps his distance from commonplace, better still he plays with it to convey his poetic disenchantment and, luckily, he definitely has something to say. Carolina Drago for "Dinet Club" estate settembre 2005

" I am ! Maybe "

Paolo Gallo had wanted to be an actor but turned into a professional advertising photographer instead. As it goes there is no vaccine against the bacillus of a histrionic personality so Gallo, who has been creating images in advertising for twenty years, becomes a photographer tout court and makes of this technique his main means of artistic expression. Paolo Gallo - who certainly is gifted with self-irony and adopted an actual cock as his logo - lives in Udine and struck us with his versatility and originality of perspective while we were surfing the net. This photographer knows his work well, his pictures range successfully from still lives to landscapes, from magazine and book covers to institutional business communication or fashion material. Gallo knows very well how difficult it is for an advert image to gain expressive autonomy: images in advertising are indeed justified by their marketing potential and consistency in mirroring the product, their strength being just as great as their power to impress the consumer's imagination. A photograph in advertising can, in fact, be beautiful and still entirely "wrong". Being a creator is not an easy job, in fact creativity itself is sometimes like a restless horse, it is difficult to ride it back to the enclosure of market rules. Competition is fierce and commonplace widespread, as a matter of fact advertising is often the kindergarten of commonplace itself, to which Paolo Gallo is insensitive by nature. The advertiser's vice of linking an image to a message takes a different turn in Gallo's work: his motivation subtly gets off the road of marketing to follow - in the artist's exhibitions - the impassable path of existence, where he brings his professionalism, intelligence, sensitivity and a sure originality of imagery. To all of this Gallo adds his love to perform, the heritage of his passion for the theatre and a wholesome way to keep his public entertained. In 1985 he began his career as an artistic photographer with the exhibition "Fotografie disgraziate - Unfortunate pictures", a title - he says - "which haunts me to this day", a collection of 30 black-and-white pictures created "to get over an unhappy romance" and also, with a taste for provocation, because they represent the opposite of the happy pictures in advertising. Despite their title - an excellent advertising idea which made the exhibition tour Italy as well as foreign countries - these unlucky photographs are very happy. They contain a typical trait of Paolo Gallo's, one which characterises all his work, that is the successful transfusion of thoughts into images. It is with this exhibition that the photographer from Friuli starts commenting on his creations, finding words to accompany the often complex train of thoughts, which supports the need to produce an image. Paolo Gallo is not much interested in aesthetic cunning and he gets irritated by computer virtuosity. He prefers to work with traditional tools, using double exposure rather than the "wonders" of Photoshop, above all he likes abounding in imagination, the human resource he finds most trustworthy. This is to be seen in his "Anima - Soul" exhibition in 1991, for which Gallo was awarded the "Giorgio Mondadori" silver plaque for photography. The collection consists of 30 black-and-white pictures - as he tells us - "images to illustrate a slim collection of poems by an author from Calabria, which have become the psychological self-analysis of some thoughts and behaviour of mine as well as of our society". This is further developed in "Spaventi - Scares", a wonderful essay on fear in the form of images, which come as a company calendar: twelve scarecrows, gaunt figures from country life, recreated by Paolo Gallo with extreme craftmanship and photographed with yet greater skill. Gallo's art is obvious when treating a serious and delicate subject matter, such as fear, and yet succeed in showing a light touch, an ironical vein as well as a deep insight into human feelings. Some of these images are accompanied by captions like: "a day spent in fear is a useful day", which explains the peculiarity of this artist's message. This advertising photographer, who had wanted to be an actor and a double bass player, has both the right intensity and lightness, Gallo keeps his distance from commonplace, better still he plays with it to convey his poetic disenchantment and, luckily, he definitely has something to say. Carolina Drago for "Dinet Club"

	Paolo Gallo Buenos Aires 2002