• 1. First, tell us how you became a Catographer. How did you get the idea? Why cats? Can you tell us a little about this project?

I photograph cats for passion, or rather, I photograph for passion towards cats. Of course. People often ask me when I started and I always have to distinguish between when I started being a “cat lover” and when I started photographing them. I was born cat lover; I don’t know the reason, but I have always felt a particular attraction towards felines in general, and specifically for cats. Photography has consequently come, in the attempt to ‘explain’ what I see. I’m not good with words, I prefer to express myself with images and, being a rather introverted person, I find my comfort zone behind the camera. Moreover this art allows me to approach many cats, all splendidly different from each other, so what more can I want?

I started to specialize in photograph of cats with a project born in 2015 – called Passions – here I portray them with their humans.

The project has evolved into C-AT Work, cats that live in the workplace; a long-term project that now sees its first goal: after more than 40 realized chapters, the photographs and stories of the working cats will be collected in 3 books, strictly in black and white (the first volume is already available, the others in release in November and February)

And then there was, and still is, Cats in Venice that tells in pictures – with the distinctive addition of their stories – the fascinating lives of the cats of Venice, combining the beauty of cats with beauty of an immortal and unique city (there is already a book published in 2018 and a calendar for the year 2020 about it)

The last born is ‘Cats and their Artists’, a project composed of a series of black and white portraits of leading artists in their sector with their cats; a single photograph per couple, looking for beauty and demonstrating that behind every great artist there is always a big cat  😉

•2. Speaking of “feline photography”, what were your greatest satisfactions? Has it become a real job?

Even today the greatest satisfaction is  being able to build something with what was born (and which still remains) a simple hobby. I’m a commercial employee in a company that produces silver jewelry, but photography is increasingly occupying an important part of my life. Having had the opportunity to bring 2 projects to become books, a calendar, receiving interviews (like this one), being a guest (me ??) of events or radio and TV transmissions, well, I would say that it is a huge satisfaction for me. Also being able to get to know people who share with me the passion for cats or photography, both because they are immortalized with their feline friends in my photographs and because they participate in meetings and events, is fantastic and gives me a great wealth. Deciding to make my passion a real job would mean having to do it for a living and then maybe having to accept compromises; my freedom now is being able to do only what I like (that is, just photographing only cats) how and when I want.

• 3. Photographing animals, a bit like babies, is always very difficult. They certainly do not pose and they are completely unpredictable. Can this sometimes help to get original shots or is it just a difficulty to overcome?

Why do I photograph cats? Well,  honestly, I often ask myself too, sometimes cursing the day I made this decision; and I usually think of it when the subject to immortalize decides that the time at my disposal is over, without even leaving me the chance to aim the viewfinder …

Perhaps I could have chosen simpler subjects, or perhaps simply more obedient ones, but, you know, the heart cannot be commanded! And so I learned to live with the frustration of a shot never made, and the euphoria and satisfaction of photographs with a sentimental value enormous for me.

Those occasions in which you are allowed in some way to get in tune with a cat or when, looking at a photograph of me, people tell me that yes, they see us and recognize that cat, well, they are moments of inestimable value.

I don’t use particular tricks, I don’t approach the cats met with food or morsels; I allow myself, when necessary, to attract attention by moving my hands, gesturing like a crazy person and playing with them. It is really very important to me that the images are natural, never forced and that it is a fun experience for everyone, both in terms of my personal photo projects and home services. 

Venice is now my weekly gym, where I cover miles and miles;

The people known in the workplace, who I go to visit to meet the cats, have seen me in the most absurd positions: I pass most of the time lying on the ground or with my back in the air, maybe wielding wooden sticks as if they were wands magical.

Well this is my world of Catographer, as I love to call myself jokingly so as not to take myself too seriously.

• 4. If you could enter a painting, which would you choose to enter and why?

I would certainly like to set foot in a surrealist painting, to see and experience a different reality, beyond any logic, from a point of view decidedly outside the box. It would probably be liberating.

• 5. Your dream?

My dream at the moment is to hope to leave something over time thanks to photography. If I really have to dream big I hope to be remembered one day as Walter Chandoah’s successor

• 6. How do you imagine yourself in 20 years?

I still hope as I am today, with so many ideas in my head, maybe a little more time to be able to make them, but with the same enthusiasm and the same passion that drives me each time to research, move, know and above all photograph.

• 7. When do you have to do a photo shoot, prepare the location or use natural environments? Are you on the sidelines or do you participate in the scene?

It all depends on what I have to photograph; for projects like Cats in Venice or C-AT Work the location is given by the place where I am, exactly as I find it. In Venice simply wandering around the city looking for resident cats, immortalizing them where they are and often where they live; a kind of feline street photography. For working cats instead the locations are the workplaces where they live: laboratories, shops, museums or schools; all left as it is in the daily lives of their lives. And already so they are beautiful places to photograph.

For “Cats and their Artists”, being a representative portrait, maybe we first choose the room where we want to take the shot and only when we are ready do we let the cats intervene.

For home services, for which I am contacted by people who want to have photographs with their cats, instead I do nothing but go to homes and assist. Usually I take all the time necessary for the cat to feel at ease and then click; sometimes I ask the owner to interact by playing or, if the cat agrees, cuddling it.

• 8. Your 3 favorite songs?

I love music a lot (even if I’m not a connoisseur) but 3 songs are really too few! Those that come to mind right now are totally different as genre and roots, but they have in common the fact that they have accompanied me in important moments of life.

The first is ‘Strade’ by Subsonica, my favorite band for over twenty years that reminds me my adolescence.

The second is ‘Live for better Days’ by Ignite, a group that marks the meeting with the person that has now become my husband, a fundamental person to whom I owe so much.

The third is ‘The sound of silence’ in the Disturbed version because I listened it  in a continuous loop after moving into our current home, whose purchase was the realization of a dream.