MARCO SIMONI Rome, 1986
Marco Simoni is a young Italian photographer.
Born in Roma in 1986; an old reflex of his father ignites his interest in photography which will definitely take shape in 2010 when he decides to move to New Zealand. He is there during the earthquake that razed to the ground much of Christchurch, the city in which he lives. In those distant lands, the first shots in direct contact with incredible nature and the Maori’s secular traditions; this first trip to New Zealand is only the beginning of a long series of trips that will bring him to Africa and India in direct contact with the minorities who fascinate him for their simplicity and dignity, through places that become moods, suspended in time, where he will return, as promised to a young girl belonging to the Apatani tribe in the northeast of India, with whom he shares a passion for travel.
In 2011 he returned to Italy interspersing his stay with departures that gradually became more frequent: Japan, Cambodia, Mexico and Guatemala, and then much Africa: Namibia, Kenya, Botswana, Madagascar, South Africa, Ethiopia. "Africa is the continent where I would like to grow old", and tells of a small campsite between Namibia and Botswana, overlooking a stream bordering a minimalist-looking plain, where long lines stand out against the horizon of elephants and giraffes heading to the mouth to drink and where he dreams of settling down one day.
And then in his stories, there is India with intense faces, which he imprinted in his photographs and tattooed on the body. He is in Jordan in 2019 where he visits the refugee camps on Syria’s border, in India in Dharamshala to see the Dalai Lama during the days of his meeting with Tibetan monks, from there he moves to Punjab in Amritsar to visit the Sikh community and then it passes to Wagah, on Pakistan’s border where the opposing armies, Indian and Pakistani, challenge each other in a surreal agony. In Nagaland, he meets the last head-cutting tribes in the world.
Today he dedicates himself exclusively to photography and leads photographic group trips to unique and unreachable locations. In 2020 his photographs are exhibited for the first time exclusively at the Roman Gallery Restelli Artco, in the solo exhibition "Loners".
