Meet Oskar Landi

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Oskar Landi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Oskar, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

Making a living in the arts as a freelancer is not easy, more so in a demanding competitive city like New York. Over the years many of the warnings I received turned out to be true, the metaphor of the rollercoaster or the cliché ‘feast or fast’ are constants that are hard to navigate. At the same time I have to remind myself that I had a life full of incredible experiences and personal growth, a privilege I could never have imagined when I started out and must be grateful for. Keeping my journey in mind is probably my main source of resilience, the realization that everything in the process has value, not just the financial/material success too often so revered.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a New York based independent artist working with photography, video and sound. I was born and raised in Italy and moved to the US in 1998 to pursue a career in the arts. I collaborated with prestigious commercial brands like Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Jimmy Choo, Celine, Levi’s, and True Religion, among others. My images, including portraits of some of the most renowned contemporary artists and thinkers, have been published in major media outlets like Wired, Discover, The New York Times, PBS, the BBC, Corriere della Sera, The Guardian, and exhibited internationally. My fine art work explores our relationship with nature, the visible and the invisible, and some of the environmental challenges of our time. In the 2000s I embarked on an epic tour-de-force of geographical and self-exploration that is still ongoing: looking for novel subject matter I started hiking at night in remote areas of the planet to photograph landscapes during the full moon. This fascination has guided me through the darkness and at times extreme weather conditions while groping on different terrains, wandering on glaciers, volcanos, jungles, and deserts. During this sort of ‘photographic pilgrimage’ I had to embrace slowness to avoid dreamlike experiences from turning into nightmares, while pondering philosophical and spiritual questions that many artists throughout history have investigated. In 2016 I was a selected participant of The Arctic Circle Residency, an art/science program that takes place on a sailboat in the archipelago of Svalbard, in the high Arctic, where I ventured to probe the presence of microplastics in that remote region. In order to do it I designed a net-tow apparatus to sieve the surface of the ocean in that forbidding environment. My efforts have evolved into a collaboration with NASA on a remote sensing study of microplastic pollution and recently I was included in a group-exhibition at the United Nations Headquarters together with an incredible roster of artists.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I would say curiosity, self-discipline, and ‘self-irony’. Curiosity triggers all learning and knowledge, it helps us to see and to question what we think we are seeing, it drives us to action and broadens our horizons. Self-discipline is fundamental to maintain focus, to be patient and accept that we have to make things work with what we have available and not give up too soon. Self-discipline is also essential to take care of our physical and psychological health, to stay healthy and optimistic when we are struggling. Self-irony doesn’t translate well in English, it’s the ability to smile at ourselves when things don’t go as planned and to take things lightly whenever possible, failed attempts and mistakes are part of the process and can at times lead to breakthroughs. If I remember correctly it was Ad Reinhardt who said ‘Art is too serious to be taken seriously’. When asked for advice all I can say is that every journey is unique, it can work out for a few years or for a lifetime, there is no fixed recipe, it’s a mix of talent, education, determination, technical skills, financial skills, networking, and a good amount of luck. Photography has never been as popular as today, I think it can still be pursued as a career, not necessarily as the only occupation, an unrelated part-time job can alleviate the pressure and expand your network while establishing a client base.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

My ideal clients are forward thinking art collectors, institutions, gallerists, curators, art buyers, as well as brands and entrepreneurs who find inspiration and awe in nature. When we can’t take breaks from our busy lives, surrounding ourselves with meaningful art can help mitigate the detachment from our primordial environment. It could be a rock we picked up during a walk in the woods, a stick we tried to decorate on the beach, or a complex picture or sculpture that someone else created and for some mysterious reason speaks to us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oskarlandi.com
• Instagram: @oskarlandi
• Other: https://vimeo.com/318642316

  https://www.un.org/en/exhibits/exhibit/re-connection

Image Credits

All images © 2024 Oskar Landi