Public Republic

Mariana Velichkova’s interview with Valentina Giuffrè

When and how did you start taking pictures?

I started taking pictures five years ago during the last match of my city’s soccer team before the end of the championship. There was a great promotional party of Messina’s team and I wanted to remember all my friend’s faces and all the colors around my city. It was a very special day; a day that felt as though anything is possible.

What are your “temptations” as a photographer?

My first temptation is the night. I like nocturne pictures. Landscapes, lighted monuments, distant lights of the cities over the sea.

Is there a place you are dreaming to take pictures of?

Of course. Easter island! It’s so far, so wild and so full of mysteries…and I like very much the stone faces lost in the Pacific Ocean.

What is your dream?

Wow, what a difficult question! I never thought about this…but I think that everyone’s dream is their own complete realization in work, money, family, love, friendship. Understanding that, maybe my dream is having the opportunity to travel around the world and learn new things everyday.

In what direction would you like to develop your skills in photography?

Of course in nocturne photographs!! I’m studying for this…and maybe soon I’ll purchase a new lens as a present to myself….

Do you have other hobbies?

I like soccer, puzzles, art and music. I like my job very much. But I think that the biggest hobby is travel, I love knowing new things, monuments, landscapes, languages.

How does photography change your life?

Photography comes to make me remember all the things I forget in everyday life because everybody’s life seems too quick and busy. It’s the book of my life, in which all is divided by days, weeks, months, years… maybe photography doesn’t change my life, but can make me think, meditate and improve all my knowledge.

Biography:

Valentina Giuffrè is 26 years old and was born in Messina, a city located in Sicily, a beautiful island suspended between sun and sea, the cradle of all Mediterranean culture and history. She works in a real estate agency and she deals with advertising and marketing.

She likes her job very much, it enables her be in touch with many people and their life experiences. She thinks that curiosity is one of the most important things necessary to compose a good photographer’s nature. Investigating, discovering and realizing the impressions of these experiences.

She bought her first camera as a game: She wanted to immortalize some images of her favorite team’s victory in striving for the championship. In the beginning it was only a game, but step by step it grew into a great passion: her camera became not only a traveler’s friend, but an everyday companion!

Sometimes she sees some colors and feels some sensations that she knows will never be the same again, they will never have the same profound image, why not remember that moment? She walked with her little camera all around Italy and Europe. As a good photographer, she loves travelling, and her favorite place, without a doubt, is Portugal.

She likes its colors very much, the unforgettable pink sunset over the Atlantic Ocean and blue azulejos over mansions and churches. The most important things that she loves to photograph are nature, architecture, seas, sunsets, mansions and churches. As every Sicilian woman she loves good cuisine and likes to decorate and photograph the dishes.

She also likes animals and to immortalize their attitudes and curious looks. Some weeks ago she received her first reflex and she is starting to “study” and learn many new things. She is not completely able to maximize her “new little game”‘s dowry, but she is working towards this! For her next holiday she will be in Galicia and it will be the first official travel using her new reflex.