Biography

Andrea Bernesco Lavore was born on January 31th 1978 in Florence, in what he defines as the most beautiful city in the world.
Thanks to a teacher whom he adored, he attended the Art High School of Florence and then studied Architecture at the University of Florence, where he explored and refined a concrete awareness of art, expressing a need, almost an ‘obsession’, for communication, exploited through all the ‘available tools’.
He continues to express gratitude to his mentors: Giuliano Colivicchi, Giacomo Castellano, Professor Cappelli, Prof. Petrillo and the ‘old masters’, commenting with irony that ‘a self-made man’ usually risks becoming incapable and antisocial.
He is passionate about anthropology, he writes, plays music, composes, paints, he talks about his travels… through the lenses of his camera.
Although he loves all forms of expression and communication, he believes that if you understand ‘loyal narration’, it is photography that absorbs, synthesizes and recounts in an accessible way to everyone what happens in existence, freeing you from all ‘containers’ and standard organization. This is why, in time, he left music and other forms of expression behind. As he loves to say: if you travel and want to listen while wearing ‘a box with a piece of glass’ around your neck, you can be with others without them noticing that you’re doing something special.
He still spends time learning with the ‘masters’.
He claims that he learned a lot from his schooling but now he loves to spend time in workshops and to learn from those who ‘really know how to do it’.
Once he had mastered his ‘observation skills’ he started at an early age to explore less known social realities, the slower ones, those places that are struggling to keep up with ‘modernity’ and ‘contemporary’ speeds, starting from Italy and its hidden villages all the way to those of the great continents.
He has travelled extensively around Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia and in time has collected a lot of material, deciding what he wants to share with others.
In 2009 he began a collaboration with a place he defines a ‘poetry corner amid tourist bins’: the ‘Giubbe Rosse’ Cafè in Florence, a live picture of the 1900s, where you can still breath the urge to converse and listen to things. In this atmosphere he has developed several projects.
‘Senza itinerario’ was a photographic story with no specific order of places and people met while going down the wrong road. A puzzle of different situations immortalized to remind ourselves that when we free ourselves from our need for certainty, we can make unforgettable encounters.
Then came ‘A piedi nudi’: a set of photos taken while barefoot of people who were walking barefoot, too.
In 2012 a project shared with the poet Daria Capanna: ‘L’esigenza della poesia nella quarta dimensione’: a sequence of minimal photographs on the interaction between man and object, where the object enhances the three-dimensional aesthetics of the image when placed in the centre of a stage, with the ‘human being’ set in the background and out of focus as if pushing the viewer to question the reasons for our interactions with things.
All pictures take on a ‘real form’ when accompanied by the poems placed next to them and, only then, the fourth dimension materializes, an indescribable concept through ephemeral material.
He has continued to travel and has become more and more curious about the ‘Asian world’.
In 2013 he left for Nepal with the desire to meet the Bon People, an ancient ethnic group residing in the unknown valleys bordering Tibet, namely ‘The Forgotten Valley of Nar Phu’.
After this amazing experience, everything changed, and Andrea changed, too.
A need arose to create a visual narrative of what exists in that world and…
In May 2015 his book Dherai Ramro Chha was published by Masso delle Fate, Signa, Florence.
In the same month, on the 31st, the book was presented by the Director of the Lucca Center of Contemporary Art in Lucca, Maurizio Vanni and from the 19th of May twenty-five photographs of this experience were exhibited alongside the Elliot Erwitt exhibition: ‘Elliot Erwitt. Retrospective.’
At the same time, during the same month of May, fourteen other pictures of the same project were displayed at the Leica store in Florence and the book was presented on the 13th at the Gallery Hotel Art in Florence during the ‘Leica Lounge’ event.
After national and international recognition start to promote his projects in important museums and bookstores like Feltrinelli and others…and to collaborate with the governments of many countries
making photographic books on the conservation of ancient ethnic groups ; hi is also the owner of
PHOTOWALKINGLANZAROTE in Lanzarote where hi gives most of his interesting workshops. WWW.PHOTOWALKINGLANZAROTE.ES

Andrea Bernesco