Photo: Piero Percoco.
Considering that Italian photographer Piero Percoco made his name with his colourful Instagram feed of candid snapshots, it might come as a surprise to discover that it’s recently been cleared (at the time of publication there are only 9 posts). And that’s because Percoco purposefully deleted nearly 1900 photos to make way for his latest project, The Rainbow is Underestimated, which will be published as a photobook next week with Skinnerboox. “Instagram is very important but it also can be unimportant,” he tells SLEEK.
Instagram has certainly had a part to play in Percoco’s career so far. After receiving his first iPhone in 2013, he began to document the daily scenes in his sleepy hometown of Sannicandro in Puglia, south eastern Italy, before running a crowdfunding campaign to launch a photobook based on his feed. The campaign caught the attention of American photographer, Jason Fulford, who edited and designed the book with Skinnerboox. Percoco’s 2018 debut, entitled Prism Interiors, provided a dreamy glimpse into life in a small and sunny Italian town, while at the same time capturing something of the elusive quality of the photograph as a form.
Although the subject matter in The Rainbow is Underestimated may seem like a continuation of the effervescent scenes of Prism Interiors — clear, cerulean seas, characterful elderly faces, random bric-a-brac and miscellanea that piques curiosity — Percoco is adamant that these are in fact “two completely different works” — “Prism Interiors was an experiment where I completely let myself be edited by Jason Fulford, whereas The Rainbow is Underestimated is 100% me. It is my life from 2014 to today, it is a conscientious flow.” Furthermore, where the images in Prism Interiors were mostly taken on his iPhone, the majority of the photos in his new book were taken on a small compact camera.
This sense of “flow” is central to Percoco’s way of working. For him, it’s not about working on a defined or specific project. Instead, he considers his approach to taking photographs as a “reflection of my character — I am impulsive and spellbound when I look at things”. This is obvious when you see his images that record the regular minutiae of the Italian day-to-day: a unripe pomegranate bursting with ruby beads; tanned teenage boys standing idle; the foil cover protecting a windscreen; a moustached old man quizzically staring into the lens. And these little things, these minor events and banal details are precisely what inspires Percoco. “To me, the biggest inspiration of all is boredom, not being able to travel for financial reasons, living in a small town, full of elderly people where everything is very slow paced. These aspects alone are enough to define my approach.”
When asked to describe his aesthetic you might be surprised to hear his answer. “Visceral, infantile, frustrated.” Somehow those three words shine a light on the essence of his approach: a childlike sense of wonder; a desire to overcome the confines of small town life; a primal gut instinct. For Percoco, a good photograph is based on one thing and one thing only: “energy, pure energy, I first perceive the energy of something before I photograph it. I am attracted like a predatory animal to its prey.”
The Rainbow is Underestimated is now available for pre-order from Skinnerboox.
All photos courtesy of Piero Percoco and Skinnerboox.