We were lucky to catch up with Alice Esposito recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alice , looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I got it from my Mother, I used to go to her office from time to time and she would always help others while still doing her work, always giving 3000% and somehow still being able to answer all my questions about her job, or just my silly question about this and that, I could see how disappointed on herself she would get when things weren’t solved in a timely manners, or at her best abilities, maybe she used to blame herself a bit too much, but I think that’s what leaders do, always listen to others and never blame coworkers if something doesn’t work, but instead trying to find a solution together while learning and build trust in each other.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I’m a Queer photographer/Creative Director.
I was born in Rome and lived part of my childhood there, I traveled a lot since my parents were diplomats (England, Switzerland, Sweden, Hungary), I ended up studying Visual Media and Photography at SFSU and completed part of my MFA there (Photography/Visual Art and Curatorial Studies) and part in Milan.
I love working with both digital and analog cameras, I prefer film and developing and printing in the Dark Room, I own medium and large format cameras. Some of my favorites are Rolleiflex, Leica, and Hasselblad. I have worked with some of the most important photographers and artists in Europe such as Vincenzo Castella, my mentor. We collaborated and took part in exhibitions and traveled across Italy. I always carry his wisdom and knowledge with me.
I grew up watching, Italian Neorealism, Nouvelle Vague, and Film Noir; they all influenced my work greatly.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
One thing my mentor always told me was: “Never lose your vision”. Each of us has a unique vision of the world, it’s great to be open about everything around us but it’s important not to change at the core, about the things that make us different, it’s easy to be influenced and changed, especially by social media trends of what specific jobs require from us, I feel like sometimes I lost myself into the repetitiveness of the job and lack of creativity due to following specific requirement and never go outside the line, what kept me apart is my curiosity and interests in new cultures and when I feel like my creativity and vision is going away from me, I try to go to exhibitions, have photo adventure with another photographer, find new passions to recharge my creativity.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
Recently I became hard of hearing, and I had to adapt my way of communicating and understanding other people. Not only did I start to learn sign language but I had to rely more and more on my other senses. In doing so, I started to pay attention more to the expressions and gestures of the people that I was talking to, the little ticks, peculiar traits, and the body language of a person became some of the most important elements of communication for me, more than the spoken language, and I think my photography is being influenced by this, I tend to pay more attention to little things, details, before I was more a composition kind of photographer, not I tend to be more focused of a specific detail and I build the photo around it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.espositoalice.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alice.cooper.esposito/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-cooper-esposito/
Image Credits
Models: Chase Coleman, Taylor Murphy-Sinclair, Chia Chen
Artist Portrait by: Chia Chen
