Capturing the Essence of Life

Hailing from a small town named palermo e trapani in western sicily, giovanni cassarà is a 41-year old middle school teacher. But teaching is not the only thing that drives him. Cassarà’s passion for photography helps him express creatively, and feeds his soul. We speak to him about his journey, his love for the art of capturing images, and his style of shooting.

- Abhishek Desai

Giovanni Cassarà was attracted to art since he was a teenager. After graduation, he decided to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, and focussed on the study of painting and sculpture, and subsequently took up photography. He concluded his studies with honors in 1999 with a thesis on the techniques of engraving and intaglio/screen printing. In 2001 he moved to Milan and began teaching art and drawing. Here is where he enriched his study in photography, and mastered composition. Today, he puts that to use photographing the people in his hometown.

He first started taking pictures with a Yashica 109 MP film camera, and a 50mm f1.4 lens. Speaking about his first experience of shooting, he said that the beginning was very traumatic. “I could not bring home any decent shots, all amplified by my photography teacher who routinely shot down all my proposals. The turning point came when I decided to buy a much shorter focal length. I bought a Yashica 20mm. Optics that inevitably opened new creative horizons. From this moment on the choice of wide-angle lens will forever affect my artistic ideas.”