Personal Best vol.30 | Sandro Georgi

12.07.2019

Written by... Sandro Georgi

Sandro Georgi is a freelance photographer from Bern, Switzerland. His main interests are documentary photography and the real stories of people. Shooting documentaries, he strives to tell the story as it is. He has been shooting with Fujifilm equipment for the last five years, and for the last two years exclusively. Sandro Georgi currently lives and works in Bern and is available for freelance jobs in Switzerland and abroad.

I am a documentary photographer with a passion for projects that go deeper instead of only scratching at the surface. I am a very curious person and love to immerse myself fully into a topic, soak up all that there is to now. I record what I see and experience exactly as I come across it. I have no interest in fabricated stories and always aim to look behind the mirror of what people and things seem to be. I don’t stage nor pose my photos but rather want people and my surroundings to forget about me in order for things to unfold naturally, to happen as they would without me. I record what happens because I believe I can shed light on and point people to stories I deem important. I want people to think and reflect about what they see in my images. I do what I do because I love the means photography provides for telling stories that need to be told. I use Fujifilm cameras because they perfectly well support my workflow due to the ergonomics and build quality and because I can achieve the desired look I need for my stories.

Gears

FUJIFILM GFX 50S
GF45mmF2.8 R WR
GF63mmF2.8 R WR

Getting Lost

To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. […] to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender a psychic state achievable through geography.

Rebecca Solnit – A Field Guide to Getting Lost

What started with only a strong desire to go back to Northern Sweden for an extended hike (and not as photography trip in particular) turned into a rather personal photo project about what wilderness means to me and how I perceive it. Intrigued by books such as A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Wild by Robert McFarlane and many more as well as bodies of work such as Ravens by Masahisa Fukase and The Peregrine by J.A. Baker and I set out to lose myself in the landscape while hiking alone for days meeting few or no people at all. I wanted to see how my images change while I make a both physical as well as a mental journey and become more and more aware of the landscape and nature around me.

I was lucky to have guidance from British Photographer Peter Fraser for this project who introduced me to the concept of the conscious mind (used for conversations and easily accessible), the subconscious mind (can at least partially be accessed with the help of certain techniques), and the unconscious mind (cannot be accessed; responsible for dreams and such). Through this I became fully aware that I was sometimes reacting to what is called upsurges of the unconscious mind through the subconscious mind to conscious mind: something which attracts your attention and draws your eyes without often knowing why. After the initial reaction though I usually framed my images with the conscious mind, which resulted often in rather rigid compositions according “to the rules” and which I started to like less and less.
Learning to recognise upsurges from the unconscious mind, exploring them and shooting what I like to call without thinking and not using the conscious mind has helped my produce much more personal images, which reflect what I felt at the moment, what I really saw and what it meant to me.

This project is a very personal project which I first and foremost did for myself and my own development as a photographer without any audience in mind. It very much reflects my personal development as a photographer as well as a human being. The images where shot in remote parts of Northern Sweden above the arctic circle. I hiked for about 250 km with tent, sleeping bag and food in my backpack along with the GFX 50S with the GF 45mm F2.8 attached (the GF 63mm F2.8 remained as a backup in the backpack).

The images show what it feels like for me to be outside in the wilderness and alone (but not alone). It generally does not matter much to me if the weather is good or not and I like rain, sleet and low hanging clouds as much as sunny days.