Photographer Kane Hulse shares some striking images of his journey through the length of Italy, using colour and form to capture the disparity between regions
Kane Hulse’s eye is led by colour. Having previously documented the sun-washed palette of Cuba, in this most recent photo essay, Hulse turns his lens to Italy, travelling from South to North, via Sicily, Rome, and the historic waterways of Venice.
“I’ve been obsessed with Italy for a while now, visiting more than 10 times in the last three years. Initially, I fell in love with the south and with Napoli in particular,” Hulse explains. “The country is so vast and different from region to region, which is great for all types of reasons – food, culture, etc. – but primarily from a photography perspective the setting is incredible throughout.”
Along the route, a narrative begins to emerge – from a bright pink door and a collection of weather-beaten chairs, to the soft but striking colours of laundry on a washing line, caught against the corner where amber and cream walls meet. His focus for the essay was ‘form and colour’, found in the shapes of sun-bathed walls, shadowed alleyways, and the birds-eye shot of an ocean, so sun-dappled as to appear metallic.
“I’ll walk around for 12 hours a day down every street back and forth, looking for that form and colour,” he tells me. “Naturally these two things attract everyone visually anyway, but when shooting I kind of program my eyes to just focus on these subjects and hunt them down in any sense possible.” His subjects often seem streamlined, but on second glance, will appear skewed, forming individual portraits of each location. In this way, a story of Italy is told, its age, beauty, and multiplicity reflected.
For more photographs by Kane Hulse, read his Colour in Havana photo essay on PORT
