Italy, 1978
Biography
● Born in Perugia Claudio Montecucco graduated as a technician in mechanical engineering and received his three-year degree as a
CAD disigner. He enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture in Florence, though after several exams, he abandoned his studies to work
in the family jewelry store as a jewelry designer and pursue his piano studies and get diploma late. A lover of all art forms, he cites
his favoirite authors with whom he identifies such as Robert Doisneau “What I was trying to show was a world in which I felt at
home, where people were kind. Where I could find the tenderness that I hope to receive. My photography were the proof that this
world could exist”. Being a reserved man and little inclined to being observed Montecucco had been taking photographs that
permitted him to express something stongly personal, images guided by the intuition, by his search so called “elusive moment” that
moment he would like to capture everyday walking down the street with his camera.
● “ I try to capture images of a routine life, what seems to be at a first glance to be banal and routine I try to lift it to a new form to a
new interpretation. I take photos almost anything I see and worth it, everything is interesting to me, life itself even in its humble
monotony. I was born introvert,introvertedness that open to a street. I search for happiness in catching a moment -“elusive moment”.
My heart and my shot beats as one. “ M.Thompson Nati
● Claudio Montecucco tries in all his projects to unite three arts such as painting, architecture and photography in one “form” and
tackle an arduous task of photography so called a capture “elusive moment” and elevate it into the art. When you define Montecucco
as a classic photographer, you can not limit him to that simple description, which you are able to glean from observing his
photographs, so carefully arranged as to seem from another time, but this is how he highlights his choice of field, which is equally
esthetic but even more intimately psychological. It is no coincidence that from his favourite authors he cites those that many years
ago walked down the Parisian streets, not so much to capture reality as to be seduced by it. That genre has been defined as
“Photographie humaniste” because it looked at man with indulgence and trust. The same used by Claudio Montecucco when he
goes down the streets looking for strange and unrepeatable moments where something almost imperceptible happens... something
which is able to make us feel that we are truly just about to touch beauty, “elusive moment”.
● Selected criticisms of Roberto Mutti