OBSERVE, COMPOSE, AND SHOOT. REPEAT.
Photographer, traveller of the unconscious, image-maker, media researcher
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Umberto Santoro was born in Palermo in 1995. His first approaches to photography began during his high school years, developing personal and commercial projects.
Now his works are divided between an attempt at experimental research through the photographic medium as a tool for investigating the unconscious and documentary projects that have as their subject the delicate relationship of forces between human presence and the surrounding environment.
In 2017 he documented the protests that took place in Taormina on the occasion of the G7 and two months later the clashes between Black Block and police forces in Hamburg on the occasion of the G20. Mainly focusing his work on humanitarian and social issues, in 2018 his reportage work DentroOreto was exhibited at the travelling contemporary art biennial Manifesta 12, for the exhibition "OltreOreto" produced by ONIBI. In the same year, he collaborated with the association Cherimus, travelling to Dakar to document a cultural project uniting Sardinia and Senegal through music.
In 2019, with ONIBI, he curated the street art project for the Sant'Erasmo hamlet in Palermo, including the creation of a mural by artist Igor Scalisi Palminteri and the exhibition of photographs from the Ulysses project, an experimental reportage on artisanal fishing in Sicily.
In 2022, he started a long-term documentation project called 'Confine'.which aims to explore and learn about the Italian coastal environment. It is an investigation into the interplay of relationships and power relations that bind man, sea, and land along the peninsula.
