Massimo Vitali: Back then [smoking] was an incredible thing – we would come home in the morning filthy, smelly, we had to wash our cameras, our suitcases, our clothes. It was another world. I remember the smoke gave this dirty feeling, discos were quite unpleasant places, you know, seen today. Today I would never go to what was a disco back then.
Lorenzo Leone: Actually, the idea that also comes out from your photos is this. Maybe because everything is very brightly lit and therefore revealed. The idea is of an unpleasant place.
M.V.: Yes, also heavy. While on the other hand in yours they are quite acceptable, apart from some stools turned over because they have been there for so long, however the fact that they are empty made them seem less heavy to me. Back then discos were places where I went driven by I don’t know what idea… Anyway I’m glad I took those pictures, but I don’t know if I would do them again today.
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L.L.: One thing that occurred to me, although it was not what pushed me to make the photos, but it occurred to me thinking about it afterwards. As you said, in these photos discos might even look like nice places. In my photos you can see spaces that are the result of planning, showing care in aesthetic solutions, architectural solutions, but that are visible just in the moment when I photographed them with the backstage light on and empty.
On the contrary, in the moment they are used, that is, the destination for which they are made, all that refinement is not visible. And it’s also kind of what you mention in the conversation in the book “Disco to Disco”, every once in a while a pipe pops up, a piece of architecture, but actually they are places filled with people who then become the subject of your photographs.
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