About me
Text of Alex Pasini (Corriere della Sera)
Mirco is a great man.
Of course, since this is his web site, I couldn't say otherwise. Moreover, we are friends, too. For nine months a year we go round the world working and joking, talking about motorcycles and ourselves, looking for good restaurants and scanning the markets of the Asian Chinatowns in search for stuff at bargain prices. But it isn't only this: he sometimes takes me ( willingly, he says.) with his scooter among the most beautiful bends of the circuits of the World Motorcycle Championship: we take place there, I with my unlikely digital camera suitable for a writer off duty, he with his professional equipment, and we look at the passing by riders. They arrive magnificent and elusive, so fast that they are there and they aren't already seen any longer. To catch them, to fix the instant, to be under the illusion to have deceived their time that is running at a speed one thousand times faster than ours, a superior instinct is needed. It is useful to be able to look at but above all to see. When we compare our photos, there's no doubt about the person who is able to see and on the contrary the one who limits himself to look at.
That's the reason why we need to say that Mirco is a great man, "setting aside" the friendship that binds us. You yourselves will say that, it will be enough for you to leaf through his albums. Or , as one can say nowadays, his galleries. Beautiful photos, unique photos. Exactly, photos taken by someone who doesn'trestrict himself to look at the world around, but by someone who can see what is behind. Not only commentary, but also detailed report: behind his images of motorcycles - leaning, unstructured, never made at random, melted inside the landscape or in mighty contrast with it, because anyway thesportsevent is never an end in itself - there are stories and emotions in it. They can be seen in the motorcycles and in the foregrounds ( the ones that the too-generous Mirco lavishes every now and then to us, little actors and actresses of the paddock photographed for once properly.): if you are looking for a different story, the rebound of a mood, the rider's soul from another perspective, the open heart of a manager, the hidden thought of a journalist, the passion of a mechanic, well, all that can be found behind his snaps.
It is a matter of talent, and after all of sensibility. The one that brings about the style and recognisability. Because this is what makes someone to be an artist: his uniqueness, the possibility of being recognized for that unrepeatable typical characteristic that he gives his own work. It isn't a sheer chance, but when Mirco's photos arrive through the agencies at the computers of the editorial office, they have already the signature even before we read their caption. " This can be only his", we think at the newspaper office. And it is always like that. Because Mirco is a great man.
And it is impossible to mistake all those people who are like him.
And now can you give me a lift to the Corkscrew?
