Photographer's Showcase: Luigi Fieni -- The Room of 1000 Demons

photo-eye is pleased to announce a portfolio from Luigi Fieni -- The Room of 1000 Demons:

The Student -- Luigi Fieni

For The Room of 1000 Demons, Luigi Fieni took his inspiration from an old Buddhist legend about transformation through the confrontation of one's deepest fears. He explains the tale like this:

“Every hundred years, Buddhist students could undergo a ceremony in order to attain enlightenment.

Those students had to pass a test consisting of walking through the room of a 1000 demons: an empty dark room guarded by 2 guardians.

Once inside, the 1000 demons would take the forms of the students’ worst fears, and the students would have to fight them in order to walk through the room. If they succeeded, they would attain enlightenment.”

As we look through the images, we walk through the tale; we meet the young-looking but confident warrior, the imposing guardians and a collection of strange and colorful demons, alive with movement. And in the end, the warrior breaks free and returns to the world enlightened. Shot in Nepal, Fieni first came to the region through his career as an art restorer. Since that initial trip he has frequently returned, working on the restoration of ancient art work in a variety of locales in Asia and teaching locals the craft of art restoration. With his background in painting, Fieni is specially skilled in reproducing a variety of styles and techniques with a paint brush, and that ability that makes him especially well suited to restoration, but that also comes through in his photographic images.

The Fears I -- Luigi Fieni

Fieni's mastery of these skills is evident in his photography. Photographing using a low shutter speed, Fieni rotates, zooms and pans his camera while shooting, capturing an image, but also streaks of color and light -- motion blurs that give the images an otherworldly feel. The effect is exceptionally painterly -- the strokes of light enhancing the tone and timbre of the images. They are almost impressionistic under the painterly definition, with their fine but visible strokes, and focus on light and movement. "As my background is mostly painting, my work is constantly trying to merge photography with painting, trying to produce photographs that are as pictorial as possible: my personal view of things," says Fieni. That personal view is certainly full of magical beauty.

See Luigi Fieni's portfolio The Room of 1000 Demons on the Photographer's Showcase here.

For more information, please contact photo-eye Gallery Associate Director Anne Kelly by email or by calling the gallery at (505) 988-5152 x202