Vortices

Abbiamo incontrato il fotografo Stefano Degli Esposti, autore di una serie di scatti originali in cui i portici rivelano una inedita natura di forte astrazione.

Qual è il suo approccio alla fotografia e in che cosa si sostanzia il progetto che condivide con Mariangela Scuderi?

After a long career in general photography, mainly tourism-related, which can be viewed on my website in the section dedicated to Photo Stories, from 2010 onward I have developed a strong affinity for abstractionism. 

Since then, my approach to photography has evolved towards a more artistic perspective, intended to create something closer to the imagination. It has involved a migration from the objective to the subjective, leaving the widest space for personal interpretation. It is about the search for beauty hidden in the details – which the eye doesn’t always grasp immediately – rather than the reproduction of evidence.

This is when I began to exhibit in the major national events: MIA Photo Fair and Photo Festival (both in Milan), with many of my works published in magazines such as Panorama and specialised magazines such as Gente di Fotografia, as well as other print media. Awards were also given for my participation in international online competitions such as PX3 – Prix de la Photographie Paris and IPA – International Photo Awards, among many others.

My current photography method is similar to a production process: I use reality as "raw material" and transform it through my mood and my imagination to obtain the "finished product", namely an image that creates something that only exists deep within the feeling that it is intended to elicit.

Today, my photos are no longer the result of a single emotional impulse, but can be enriched by further "post-production" processing, without losing their instinctive nature: vision is added to emotion. My way of making images went from random to planned. My series are no longer linked to an event or a place, but to a focus on a certain context or theme. My projects range from sunsets to urban agglomerations, earth-based to aerial shots, architecture to agriculture. This imaginative vision of the world often helps me to discover singular aesthetic commonalities between seemingly unbridgeable worlds, such as discovering the architectural lines of the metropolises in the vineyards of the Agritecture project.

The last of my projects is Vortices, created in the summer of 2025 in collaboration with Mariangela Scuderi (journalist, photographer and videomaker). We set out to create an artistic visual rendering of the Porticoes of Bologna, based on the study of their architectural characteristics and an exploration of their details. Using a play upon words in the original Italian (Portici – Vortici, literally Porticoes and Vortices), Vortices seeks to represent the magic of the sequential and sometimes hypnotic nature of these urbanistic identifying features of the city, with its perspectives that can extend to infinity. 

In brief, Vortices is: 

... a tribute to Bologna, to give back the emotions it gives us, and to add a new aesthetic value to the historical and cultural worth already recognised by UNESCO

… like a journey of the mind, capturing attention through the magic of perspective play and transporting it to another dimension with the help of the imagination

... like walking within the hidden beauty of the "pedestrian metro" of Bologna, up to the sky above San Luca.

How did the idea for Vortices come about?

The Vortices project arose from Mariangela Scuderi’s idea to capture in images the sense of infinity of the Porticoes of Bologna. We started from the similarity with that perception of endlessness you get with the Manhattan (New York – USA) skyline, based on careful and rigorous observation of two of my special series: Minhattan (Projects - Citypatterns) and above all Legoland (Fine Art). The latter is aimed to represent the interchangeability of different images, juxtaposing them with each other in a different sequence without altering the truthfulness of the various final overall images, just as in a Lego construction, in fact. The artistic aim of Mariangela Scuderi's idea is to create an image printing model called CUBO, the Italian for “cube”, which can seamlessly populate an entire environment peripherally, exploiting a series of images with suitable characteristics, such as those of the Vortices project and the other two series mentioned above. 

Given the impossibility of shooting the porticoes from the right distance, the project focuses on the repetitiveness of the shots, amplifying the effect of their architectural particularities to better interpret the meaningful theme of infinity. In fact, some works show unfinished figures at the edges, to give the pattern a sense of limitlessness, as well as offering the possibility of continuing the image depending on its use. 

The Vortices project has a logo, chosen and created in collaboration with Mariangela Scuderi; it was inspired by the "Vortex" work.

Technically, how are images constructed?

Vortices consists of 100 works, made by composing 50 basic photographs in different ways. The shots were made freehand, in various sunlight and artificial lighting conditions at 16 porticoes, in the following areas: Meloncello, San Luca, Via Indipendenza, Via Farini, Piazza Cavour, Via Oberdan and Piazza Santo Stefano.

Each work consists of the specular repetition of a single base photograph within the same final image. The compositions contain up to over 500 base photographs, which are oriented and juxtaposed with each other in different ways. The titles of the works arise from impressions shared with Mariangela Scuderi at first sight after completion, but they can be interpreted in an absolutely subjective way. Post-production takes up a good part of the work. 

What future would you like for these works?

In addition to participation in exhibition events, we believe that the Vortices project has a natural purpose of representing the beauty of Bologna with images that could become iconographic both for the Porticoes themselves (as a UNESCO heritage site) and for the city, from the institutions to its inhabitants. The Vortices works could be reproduced on objects from, including but not limited to, the world of ceramics or fashion, or even wallpapers, as well as graphics and its multiple uses. However, the endless nature of its works makes Vortices usable in limitless ways in any area, thanks also to the special place that the Porticoes fondly occupy in the hearts of Bologna's people and probably also of tourists, who visit Bologna in much greater numbers than in the past.  

So, in our opinion, Vortices could be a sort of ambassador for the beauty of Bologna and could attract the attention of new visitors with intriguing images of mysterious textures that arouse curiosity. This could be an alternative to the classic images that merely show the evidence (already widely available and easily found on the web) and a sentimental token for Bologna's citizens and tourists who have already visited it (souvenirs).

Web site of Vortices: https://www.stefanodegliesposti.it/works/projects/vortici/