Exploring the World Through His Lens: Mario Tarantino
Mario Tarantino
Photographer · Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Architectural minimalism in black and white. Less is more.
Why this conversation
Mario Tarantino was born in South Africa to a Neapolitan father and a French mother, and movement has shaped him ever since. He photographs in black and white, almost always, and his pictures are stripped back to the point of stillness: stone, water, light, and a single figure for scale. I wanted to talk to him about what monochrome lets him say that colour cannot, about darkrooms and the screens that replaced them, and about making the mundane marvellous.
The work
Based now in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Mario travels to make pictures, and treats photography and travel as two sides of the same coin. A childhood spent moving between landscapes and architecture seeded the vision; he came to photography as an art form later in life, and to minimalism as a discipline. He works in the spirit of the surrealists, Magritte, Breton, de Chirico, holding to the idea that less is more.
His images are monochromatic, built from deep blacks and crisp whites, often made with long exposures in low light. They are low-key and quietly emotional, finding the moments most people walk past. "I find that the simplicity of monochromatic imagery, with all its tonal nuances, can make the mundane marvellous," he says. He appreciates colour, but his heart is in black and white. "The surreal nature of the monochromatic palette has always fascinated me." For Mario, monochrome offers a timeless elegance that outlasts trends.
This photograph seeks to illustrate creation on two sides, mankind on the one hand and nature on the other. Nature, with its curves and flowing vastness, set against our stark, straight architectural lines, come together in one scene, lit by the setting sun's ethereal glow.
ReFocus World Photo Annual 2024
People's Vote Award, Minimalism (Professional) · Honorable Mention, Minimalism (Professional) · Nominee, Landscapes (Professional)
The simplicity of monochrome, with all its tonal nuances, can make the mundane marvellous.
The conversation
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
My inspiration comes from many sources, the greats always a constant. Among the photographers, Berenice Abbott, Lucien Herve, Ansel Adams and Sebastiao Salgado immediately spring to mind, and they continue to shape the way I work. Working within creative circles brings inspiration too, often from other disciplines and from painters. I have a great admiration for the surrealists, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Delvaux and Yves Tanguy, as well as historical landscape painters such as Albert Bierstadt and others.
How do you navigate the digital age?
I recognise what technology has done for photography, the accessibility, the democratisation of the medium, but I also miss certain traditions, like darkroom development, which is an art in itself. "Today, everything done in a darkroom is replicated on a screen," and yet I find real joy in the meticulous craft of post-production. The act of creating images, from capturing them in the field to crafting them afterward, is incredibly rewarding. I see AI as another tool, but I think it is important to celebrate the natural world. Sometimes we can become obsessed with the artificial and forget that our world is full of amazing places. Old school has an uncanny way of making comebacks. Just as vinyl outlasted tape and CD, there will always be room for many forms of expression in photography.
What are you working on next?
A landscape series called Wanderings, where landscapes are the subject but so is the way we interact with them. The collection also seeks to illustrate our insignificance in the vastness of nature. Alongside it, I am working on launching a set of expeditions.
Old school has an uncanny way of making comebacks.
Find his work
See more of Mario's black and white world on Instagram.
You will also love our conversation with Theodoros Bafitos, on capturing architecture through a photographer's lens.
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