Canon Professional Network - Il Corriere della Sera’s Renata Ferri to join Editor’s Choice 3<br class="br

October 2011

Renata Ferri, the chief picture editor of Io Donna, the women's weekly magazine of Il Corriere della Sera, is to judge readers’ pictures for CPN Editor’s Choice in November. The category will be ‘Closeness’.

Editor’s Choice, now in its third edition, links CPN readers to the world's best photo editors, and each month allows Canon users to upload their images to be judged and commented on. Editor's Choice 3 features a different conceptual/technical category each month, and includes a brief and advice from a leading professional photographer.

Renata Ferri, the chief picture editor of Io Donna.

From 1 November CPN readers will be able to upload their ‘Closeness’ category pictures to Renata Ferri. You can already read more about Renata Ferri and The Brief for ‘Closeness’, and the Professional Advice from Canon Ambassador and wildlife photographer Brutus Östling.. We've also gathered together all the best CPN technical articles related to ‘Closeness’ (see box below).

Ferri follows the current Guest Editor Alexia Singh, Editor-in-Charge of the Wider Image Desk at Reuters, who is judging readers’ images this month in the category of ‘Solitude’. Readers still have until 31 October to upload pictures to her. Readers will also have the chance to vote for their favourite image each month, and a large selection of the photos submitted are displayed on the Current Entries page for the whole world to see.

As well as being the chief picture editor of Io Donna, Renata Ferri is also art director of the Atri in Motion annual projections, held during the ReportageAtriFestival. Ferri has been a jury member for many photographic awards and has edited several photographic books and written their introductions, the most recent being Stato d'Italia. Ferri joined Contrasto as editor-in-chief in 1991, coordinating about 40 photographers. For 14 years, she oversaw all the Contrasto photographers' projects – from conception to editing and distribution – to national and international clients. From 1999 onwards she also directed the formation of the Contrasto's digital database. In 2006, Ferri organised Altri Mondi, an exhibition focused on photojournalism over the last three decades, through the work of Italian authors. In 2008 she joined the Reflexions Masterclass project, curated by Giorgia Fiorio and Gabriel Bauret, and in 2009 she took part in a World Press Photo educational project in Angola. The following year, she organised a series of workshops with leading international photographers and curators for FNAC Italy. Ferri is currently based in Milan.

Commenting on ‘Closeness’ as a category, she said: “The dictionary tells us that ‘closeness’ is a noun meaning the distance, or lack of it, between a person, place or thing. But what can that mean in artistic terms? Closeness can be the distance to another person, but also to another country, family, nature, body, fear or disease, for example.

“In photographic terms I think of closeness as ‘intimacy’. Taking pictures, after all, is an intimate and complicated act. Some artists gave us extraordinary poetic images, mirrors of our emotions. Nan Goldin’s work is pervaded by intimacy. In her photographs, her private world and relationships are the subjects. Michael Ackerman also delves into his own experiences, doubts, dreams and nightmares to produce gritty, dark images.

“Francesca Woodman’s work focuses on herself and especially her body. Antoine D’Agata digs deep into his, and our, obsessions: sex, desire, limits, and fear. Closeness is an important ingredient in the epic work of Eugene Richards. The way he uses the camera is crucial to his intimate examination of the lives of other people – their pain, their drama.

“Taking pictures, especially intimate ones, is complicated and ambiguous. This is what Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography: ‘To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.’

“Closeness, in the end, concerns proximity with the world around us, but it is also the measure of the empathy that we have with the world and other people, and with ourselves and our own feelings,” said Ferri.

Category No. 4: ‘Closeness’ – techniques and advice

Upcoming Editor's Choice categories will include 'Perspective' and 'Lightness', and will feature different guest editors from leading agencies and publications.

Related links