Gabriele Rigon, Vitorchiano, Italy

Italian photographer Gabriele Rigon was born in 1961, in a small town called Gemona del Friuli, Italy.  His primary line of work is piloting a helicopter for the Italian army, while photography is his leading passion. “I fly Huey’s and CH 47 Chinook’s, it’s beautiful work, but it steals a lot of your time,” says Rigon.  

Ever since he was a young child he was accustomed to seeing people interested in photography, as his Grandfather had a photographic studio and was a working photographer since 1898 (and before was owned by the father of my grandfather. 

Folio Hunt: When did you first become interested in photography? 

Gabriele Rigon: The first serious use of my camera was in reportage, because I used to be a combat photographer for my flight goup, and my first works were some images from a United Nations mission in Namibia (South West Africa), in 1990. The relation between the sky and the land, is probably freedom, that you want to feel with wings, and freedom that you want to feel when you take photographs for passion.

FH: Tell us a bit about your fashion and fine art figure work

GR: The female nude is for me the most compelling and provocative, it’s perhaps nature’s finest form.  To stop with an image the beauty of a gesture of a female, is like creating an eternal symbol of beauty. If you see the Nike statue from the ancient Greeks, nothing has changed in more than 2000 years. In this time, we are more accustomed to the dynamic images of film or television, where images are fast and furtive. Fine art nude photography is like recuperating classical values, giving to the eroticism a noble dimension. My devotion for nude is because I consider it as the real nature of people, nothing to hide, just a gift from the nature. 

The truth is that I am romantic, and in front of a female beauty the only way to say something
is poetry.

Images copyright: Gabriele Rigon