 Christian Tagliveni's photography is a remarkable body of work which is going to introduce you to fantastical worlds that are equally familiar and yet oddly surreal, like half-glimpse fragments of Christian's fertile imagination. Today I invite you to discover this amazing collection of portraits that draw the inspiration not only just from the modern day but also the world of Jules Verne with a dash of cubism and Italian Renaissance painting added for good measure. Along the way we're going to meet the cardboard ladies, blast off to the stars with 19th century French steampunk aeronauts, and spend time with some futuristic royalty. How's it, how's it? Thank you ever so much for joining me here today as we look at this fantastic book simply called Christian Tagliveni. Christian started his art photography career photographing very much in the style of Erwin Olaf so Erwin Olaf creates these contrived sets where people are in them and they're telling a story with without words like a single image and they're very elaborate and they're very involved. I'm a big fan of this type of photography and I think Christian has done it very well here but he decided for whatever reason that this wasn't quite working for him and it's this next series that he came up with and I'm going to guess that Dama di Cattone is excuse my awful Italian is ladies of cardboard. I think that's probably not a bad one. Let me know in the comments anyway. I am going to use the new TPE brush of truth here to point out because rather than throwing my hands all over and these photographs for me initially are very reminiscent of like the da da sort of period the Bauhaus you know stuff like that where it is quite cubist and it does indeed say here cubism and what this is is actually a fantastic outfit that is comprised of sheets of cardboard. Christian made this outfit and one of the things that is absolutely gorgeous about these outfit is the way they sort of distort our reality and how we interpret the photograph. The reason they do this is that if you see the waistlines here and here and here quite clearly this lady is not that thin and neither is her and what's happening is it's a little visual trick of the eye. It's a very subtle arrangement that throws our eye off and reaches out to us but not being obvious. We can see this in play here you know there's the nipped waist again and what's happening is the lady is leaning through the cardboard. The cardboard is on a separate plane to her which is a way of being able to create this oddly surreal look to their silhouettes and their figures which is something that comes through Christian's work throughout his career. The next series that Christian worked on is called 1503. Now this obviously we can see it's a bit of a departure. These images are more reminiscent of sort of the Italian Renaissance. They've got more of a painterly quality to them a painterly feel and again we've got these outfits that are made by hand and everything a lot of great attention is going into the whole composition of the photograph. One of the great things about a book like this is that you can see the evolution of a photographer's style when they when you're going through this and Christian comes back to similar feelings similar themes again and again and as we go through the book you're going to see a fantastic growth in his photography and how the images become so much richer and so much more rewarding but with very very little subtle changes and it's good notion to us all and that how trying to improve your photography is not necessarily great leaps but just little polishes. There's that theme again of the the oddly surreal body shapes and we've got this elongated neck here in this lady and I just I loved that it's like a little signifier of Christian's work and it's not brash it's not in your face. This is a great example of this evolution that I was mentioning with his photography. The card ladies at the beginning of the book have now evolved into something that feels a little bit more polished a little bit more refined and this is this is a hallmark I think of confidence that that an artist is starting to find their voice and starting to be able to express themselves with greater intent. These two photographs are a wonderful illustration of the the color palette that Christian uses in his photography where they are really harmonious and lovely and I do like the work say for example of Alex Webb who's quite brash and is quite bold but at the same time I also like this it's different strokes for different you know different strokes for different folks and and sometimes you want loud sometimes you want rock and roll and sometimes you just want classical chamber music. These photographs remind me somewhat of Desiree Dolbyn who is a Dutch photographer who also creates wonderfully sort of haunting images of Renaissance kind of feel periods and if you are interested in looking at her photography which has a lot of similarities to this particular section of Christian's work I will put a link up for you at the end of the video. I'm a huge fan of the turn of the century or should I say the turn of the 19th century photography going into the 20th century that is that that Finde-Sackel period in in France and Steampunk and Jules Verne and and it's no surprise that when I was initially introduced to Christian's photography it was through this voyages extraordinaire and my French also terrible sort of period and and this this is for me probably the most exciting part of his his photography. These photographs have a that Steampunk aesthetic to them they have this luminaire brothers aesthetic this this idea that it's a futuristic world but it's in the past which I've always loved that look. These photographs also put me in mind of someone like Felix Nadar who was a great French portrait photographer and it feels like he could have been here photographing these aeronauts as they were you know preparing to take flight to space. It's great that we're being invited into these worlds that Christian is creating for us that he's is this figment of his imagination that he says come come with me on this voyage as I show to you what it is that's going on with with my mind I love the fact that all these photographs that Christian is creating of like figments of his imagination that he is taking the time to construct and present to us and all of these photographs that you've seen they are all made by hand everything in them is made specifically for these photographs the outfits that the ladies are wearing the sets everything leaps forth from his imagination in the next series that Christian puts together you can see he's gone back to that original idea that he had with with Owen Olaf you know these these the bigger sets and more of a more of a set piece sort of feel to them as sort of a chapter from a book or a still from a film but now in the space of what the 10 or so years from the from the very first photographs there's so much more confidence so much more delicate way that he's treating the whole set there's there's more depth to it there's more emotion it's not simply a a pretty picture it's now starting to have a soul it's now starting to have a voice of its own hopefully throughout this whole book you can see what happens when a photographer gets more confident gets more ability to explore the worlds that he sees inside his his mind and and and bringing them to fruition to showing them to us and here's a here's a great example all of the photographs from this particular period they all have this wonderful rich sort of feel to them they have a a lovely color palette going on each is individual and yet they sort of stay together you know they just look so marvellous and i just love it i love the fact that he is now starting to give expression to his his own imagination in a full and vibrant way looking at these photographs there may be something that you will have noticed and if you look carefully at this there's a little clue in there the shape of this young lady's hat helmet whatever you want to call it is rocket shaped and and her outfit is quite clearly in the Renaissance sort of period so that's the kind of the rocket shape that you see there and i'm feeling in this that she or he sort of christian rather is starting to put the world of the jules verne steampunk and the world of the renaissance northern italy artist together he's melding them into something that is uniquely his own vision once again you can see this idea at play so everything in the bottom part of her has fabric has texture has old world but this this magnificent looking headpiece either looks like it's it's burnished wood which it most likely is or it could be plastic but it just looks like there's a mesh of futuristic and retro i don't say retro it's sort of historical in there and it's absolutely lovely and i and something i haven't really touched on but i think it's worth bearing in mind is or mentioning rather is that all of these people all of the people he has photographed are not professional models they are people he has found on the street and he has asked them to photograph and if you do take a lesson from this idea of asking people on the street to be photographed it's that anybody can be a great model for you if you give them the tools to express themselves just as much as a photographer needs to express themselves through their own photography so does the person being photographed and i always find it's exceptionally important that you give the person being photographed something to think about give them a role to play just as much as they're wearing costumes and they're wearing outfits that make them look a certain way they need to feel the certain way and if you ask somebody to think about something think about maybe a loss she's feeling introspective here she's thinking about something maybe christianne has asked to say to think about something that think about the first time that a pet passed away or the first time your heart was broken and channel explore that feeling and that gives your your photographs so much more depth somewhat unusually for a lot of photographers christianne goes into depth at the end of the book about how the the sets and the you know the the constructions of the photographs were were made and i love the fact that you get little insight into it not from the technical point of view you know the cameras and what have you but from the the way this world is constructed and you can see the effort and the the the attention to detail and the dedication that goes into creating these photographs if you do enjoy looking at the likes of christianne then i would hardly suggest that you check out the work of Desiree Dolrin i'll put a link up to her on screen for you now thank you ever so much for being here today and i look forward to seeing you again soon