Emilio Tanasi

“People have a lot to say and I always try to connect with my subject by listening and sharing ideas or personal experiences”

Intercru: Where are you from? Where do you live and work now?

Hi, my name is Emilio Tanasi and I was born in Germany and I lived there for more than 20 years. My family is originally from southern Italy. At the moment, I work and live in Italy as an interpreter and a freelance photographer.

How did you get started in photography? What was your first camera?

During my time in Germany, I had friends studying in the Academy of Arts and I had passion for photography and videography while I was studying computer science. I was always fascinated by their lifestyles and thoughts as artists, so I got surrounded more and more by a lot of artists and I felt this was the right place for me in this world.

I always had a passion for art, especially for visual arts, but I needed a spark in my life to begin with it. One day, a friend decided to sell me his Canon 650d with the Canon 50mm 1.8 lens for a really cheap price. I finally had the opportunity to shoot with a real camera and it was love at first sight. I took some portraits of my neighbor and I fell in love with the results.

I started to bring my camera everywhere and every time I held the camera in my hands it was like the liberation of my soul and imagination.

Where do you find creative inspiration?

I find inspiration from some photographers on Instagram like @josselin, @theogosselin, and @inkaliston. My main sources of inspiration have always been movies and music.

Songs are the best inspiration to me. I try to understand the lyrics of a song and in this way, I imagine the story of a song in a photographical way and then I write down my ideas. By hearing music, I create drafts of photo stories and save them for future photoshoots. I love to create tons of mood boards.

I also ride a lot by bike to discover new places or situations.

People are also a good source of inspiration. They have a lot to say and I always try to connect with my subject by listening and sharing ideas or personal experiences.

I travel a lot and I can say that the windows of planes, buses, trains, or cars are like a big viewfinder to me and it allows me to take visual “screenshots” with my imagination.

What’s your favorite food?

As an Italian, I should say pizza but I really love octopus with baked potatoes!

What’s your favorite movie of all time?

My favorite movie of all time is Interstellar. I usually don’t like sci-fi movies talking about outer space. A friend convinced me to watch it and wow... I really loved it. It gave me goosebumps how Nolan combined the theme of love with time and space. The music, colors, photography, and actors are simply perfect in this movie.

What really makes you happy?

The combination of traveling with my girlfriend and friends/family and having my camera with me is the thing that really makes me happy.

Also working as a photographer makes me really happy and proud. Photography gives you the opportunity to know new people and new places, to travel, and to create. Photography is a sort of full-time hobby. You have always something to do: shoot, organize, edit, study, handle relationships with clients and your team. I can’t ask more from life.

What is the best gift you’ve ever been given?

The best gift I’ve ever been given is a ticket for the concert of my favorite band, Mumford and Sons.

What’s your proudest accomplishment?

My proudest accomplishment is to have built a balanced life with a stable and very long relationship and to have found my inner peace in photography. It took years until I finally found my own style.

If you could travel back in time, when and where would you go?

If I could travel back in time I would go to America in the ’70s or ’80s to see a concert of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson... to live the idea of freedom, the revolutions, and permissive life of those years. Everything was a surprise back then.

Nowadays you can travel and you can know and see through your phone what you are going to visit because of the internet. So, less surprises I guess. Also in photography, I think nowadays it’s more difficult to be “exclusive” because of the tons of pictures we see every day through social media so one picture has a highlight for a couple of minutes and then it disappears because of the continuous scrolling down.

Who knows you the best?

My girlfriend knows me the best. We have known each other since we were 14 years old.

In 3 words how would you describe yourself?

I would describe myself as a dreamer, and as an emotional and understanding person.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

The advice that I would give to my younger self is to never stop doing things and to stop brooding and ruminating over something a thousand times... just do it!