Alberto Lisi – Hikari Kesho
He has been a photography lover since he was 10 years old, when his grandfather, a lover himself of this expressive form, gave him as a gift his first camera… a beloved folding Voigtländer he still owns.
When he was 18, he joined the Padua photo club and took part at the club activities, receiving many praises at exhibitions and photographic competitions until 1985, when he started working professionally and specializing in fashion photography. Among some of the most important companies and brands in the industry, there are Alviero Martini, Romeo Gigli, Gianfranco Ferré, Egon von Fürstenberg, Mariella Burani only to name a few…
Thanks to his never-ending research for new expressive methods, in 1992 he created Safilo’s first worldwide campaign (with the top model Randy Ingerman), using film treatment techniques whose outcomes are currently achievable only with the help of the computer.
His curiosity for everything connected with the research and the innovation led him to be one of the first to experiment with the digital photography applied to the fashion industry. This resulted in a 4-page article published in 1998 in the prestigious magazine «Photo» on a test he did for the Replay company: he took photos of the top model Vibe Sorensen (the Campari celebrity endorser) with an Olympus, one of the first “one-shot” cameras to appear on the market.
He was asked several times by the Urbino Academy of Fine Arts to hold photography seminars and talks with the students about the professional and commercial aspects of photography and the artistic angle, an area in which he has been widely involved since his first approach with the camera.
A film buff with a certain propensity to fetish and noir, he was called for three editions of the “Bizzarro Film Festival” to attend as a member of the jury.
If fashion photography is his job, his great passion is to photograph bodies, mostly women. In 1997 he was invited to participate to “Il corpo illustrato/The illustrated body”, a collective exhibition on the tattoo history at the Castle of Mesola, where his works were next to those of Gian Paolo Barbieri, Oliviero Toscani, Bruce Weber and other big names of the international photography field.
In 2000 his works were published with great success in the photobook Eroine, Streghe, Anguane: Leggende d’acqua e di metamorfosi/Heroines, Witches, Anguanes: Water and metamorphosis legends, co-created with the anthropologist Roberto Roda.
In 2002 they announced on the internet that a photo made for the designer Ferré campaign, developed from his concept, was nominated for the “Eye Award 2002” prize, an international award “dedicated to the most innovative and brilliant advertising communication in the eyewear industry”. He was second, just behind Christian Dior!
In 2007 he published Boundless, his second personal book, a photographic project exploring the boundaries of beauty, meant in absolute terms, and immortalizing the bodies of Junoesque women in essential, minimalist images that recall the cult of Mother Earth and the Feminine, represented in the Paleolithic by the Venus of Willendorf.
In June 2010 in collaboration with the architect De Grandis, president of the “Teatrio” association, he exhibited at the Mondadori gallery in Piazza S. Marco, Venice, a photographic project entitled “Venice, a timeless woman”, where he gave his personal interpretation of the modern woman and her projection towards the future: all of this was the basis for a book.
In 2012 the biennial photography event in Houston, Texas, selected him, the only Italian professional, and chose his photo “Observing the stillness of Brenta river” for the official poster of the manifestation.
In 2013 he started collaborating with the Gallerie d’Arte Vecchiato to be promoted in the contemporary art circuit.
In 2013 he was the only Italian artist, among five international artists, to be selected for the Biennale Vught (Netherlands); in the same year, he exhibited his works at the international art fair ArtePadova in Padua, Italy.
In 2015 the Italian Tramer Art Lounge exhibited some of his works at PhotoLA, one of the most important contemporary art fairs in Los Angeles.
From then on, the commercial photography, linked to the world of advertising and fashion, and the artistic one followed one another with great success and satisfaction. The first has been consolidated by 34 years of experience in the field, while the second has enjoyed growing praise worldwide, demonstrated by several exhibitions in trendy clubs, art galleries, and the publication in magazines and photobooks.
In June 2018 his third photobook Shibari at the Villa was published. The first of a series entitled “Shibari Tales”, it included: six original photographic works in a limited edition of 50 copies, 255 backstage photos taken by his assistants, and a 2-hour DVD showing the background and highlighting the technical aspects and the atmosphere which marked the realization, which varied from the technical angle to the spicy and the funny one.
Thanks to his decades of experience and the wide know-how obtained in all these years as a professional, ranging from the darkroom techniques for b/w fine art, to the sophisticated shooting techniques and lighting of analog photography, to the state-of-the-art acquisition, post-production and prepress software for digital photography, Alberto Lisi (aka Hikari Kesho) organises different levels of workshops of photography and shibari (art that, more than any other, influenced his artistic research over the last 15 years) in his studio – which is also the venue of a cultural association of which he is the president – trying to spread among the students the professionalism and the enthusiasm which distinguished him in all these years.