Ilaria Conte

Ilaria Conte (Turin, 1980) graduated from the City of Westminster College in London in 2004 and began assisting some of the most influential photographers in the world of advertising while pursuing a personal shooting career. She worked with several contemporary artists, including the acclaimed Alison Jackson in London. While working as an advertising photographer Conte developed a deep admiration for the “Are - Bure - Boke” style, the art of Shoko Hashiomoto, Daido Moriyama, Kōji Taki, and the experimental work of Eikoh Hosoe, and has developed a strong passion and profound interest in Japanese photography and its exponents. Her fusion of western design rules with the more serene oriental sense of beauty is highly notable in her style. In New York City in Autumn 2019, Conte exhibited 105 images depicting this style which had been taken in the Kantō and Kansai regions on her first trip to Japan in the winter of 2018. This collection was showcased in her first book – Minamo no Tsuki – an intimate diary involving the viewer to engage with the gentle and quiet observation of our society. Conte’s photography is quiet and poetic, and deeply personal. Her work reveals what is beyond a journey with striking black and white images celebrating a melancholy solitude with a deep sense of loneliness and silence.