About me

Emiliano Santoro was born in Sicily where he spent most of his formative years.

He is currently living and working in London, UK.

During these years he collaborated with different bands, released a couple of singles (his song “Girls like him” performed by Junkstar reached #2 in the amazon new releases chart), toured extensively Europe and U.S.A  and wrote and performed music which has been used for a BBC show and other formats.

The interest in art and the exploration of conceptual photography has been a long and winding path: his vision and peculiar approach has been channeled and focused into a linear project under the guidance of Italian artist Michele Pala.

Only in 2013 he has started showing his artworks which so far have been featured in galleries worldwide.

Of his work Santoro says: “I believe that there is something about the ordinary that can be re framed and proliferate into an imaginary unconsciousness. A moment where the tension between the elements of a scene is at its most; paradoxically reaching a sudden moment of balance that in reality doesn't exist because extrapolated from its contest.

Every photography I have taken doesn't mirror the reality of the persons who are in it, it merely mirrors myself. My subject are defenseless, fair-weather interpreters of my feelings and the way I decide to depict them is similar to the process of selecting the words to describe a state of mind.

There is something uneasy and uncomfortable out there which frightens me but at the same time I feel I can connect to. I’m chasing it with my camera for everybody to see it, for everybody to hear the stories".

Writer and journalist Paul Raffaele writes: "Emiliano Santoro’s street photography signals the arrival of a major new talent. His black and white scenes pulsate with the cruel anonymity of today’s city life. Stark architectural lines that form nondescript buildings, bridges and streets capture the tiny human figures within their frames, pinned with a brutality like insects stuck by a scientist onto a display board in a museum. Santoro’s photos evoke an aching loneliness where humans have been brutalized into a mute acceptance of their nothingness. It is as much an invaluable early 21st century vision of city life in Europe as Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photos evoked a human passion of people of his time who had not yet been ground down by overbearing big government, a pervasive media, heartless capitalism and babbling call centers. Where Cartier-Bresson’s iconic photographs could immediately be recognized as a mid-20th century Paris that vibrantly celebrated its people’s humanity as they celebrated their city’s very big heart, Santoro’s cityscapes show us early 21st century city life ­ anonymous, faceless people seen as silent shadows drifting across papier-mâché tableaus.