The unreservedly remarkable pen and ink drawings of artist and photographer, Alessandro Paglia, should be used to eliciting the responses: “It can’t possibly be… There’s no way… That is definitely a photograph.” Created entirely by hand, first through a pencil sketch of the subject and then through the use of “superimposing a layer of chaotic lines on top of another” with intensely black, felt-tipped pens on rough-grain cotton paper, the artist spends a painstaking fifty, to two hundred and fifty hours working on each oversize drawing. But the near photographic results are well worth the laborious process for each of his custom made art pieces. In fact, the drawings – which can be commissioned to be as large as 113 x 940 cm – are the result of Alessandro combining his two passions, these being photography and fine art. The process itself entails Alessandro first taking to the photography studio where, after arranging his chosen subject (more on that below), Alessandro shoots “a few tens of photographs” as he tries to achieve the perfect image that offers exactly what he’s looking for regarding the composition, and the play of shadows and light. This is the stage where photography turns to fine art and the technical 0.1 to 0.8 black felt pens replace his camera. As he says, “normally, I do not just reproduce an object as is, but with simple interventions such as a special coating, a deformation […] I want to get a surprise, a ‘twist’ on the story that the object recounts.”
