Carlo D’Orta on His Photographic Practice: Architecture, Geometry, and Abstraction

Italian photographer Carlo D’Orta describes his practice as extracting painterly images from reality through architecture, focusing on lines, intersections, and geometric combinations rather than buildings themselves. His series Biocities draws inspiration from abstract art by Mondrian, Malevič, El Lissitzky, Rothko, Peter Halley, and photographers Franco Fontana and Lucien Hervé, as well as de Chirico’s metaphysical cityscapes. The Geometrie Still Life series shifts to classical Mediterranean architecture, while Vibrazioni captures reflections in glass windows that distort surrounding structures, with post-production color adjustments but no form manipulation, inspired by Futurism (Balla, Boccioni, Carrà, Severini) and Gaudí. D’Orta cites Rodchenko, Proust, and Fontana on seeing anew. His works are limited editions of 3 with certificates, printed on UV inks on plexiglass with aluminum backing, sizes from 60×40 cm to 250×150 cm. He operates from his ArtStudio/Gallery in Rome, Piazza Crati 14. The monograph "Architextures. Astrazioni architettoniche" was published by Eclipse, Milan, 2020, 340 pp., €40.