1. Who is Azzurra Biagi?

A woman, a photographer, a wild spirit, a free thinker. After my degree in Political Sciences and Journalism in 2006 with a thesis in photojournalism, I started to work as a photo editor in a press agency in Florence. After one year, my hunger for adventure made me move to Milan and Turin where I went into the advertising industry  as a copywriter.

In 2010, I returned to Tuscany where I began to write and occasionaly take photos for a daily newspaper of the editorial group “L’Espresso”.

In 2012, after two years of local news and international  reportage in Tunisia, USA, Serbia, and Morocco, I became a portrait, lifestyle, wedding and destination wedding photographer. You can see my work here www.bluestudiophotography.com!

  1. How did you become a photographer?

Photography has mysteriously always been part of me, strangely because in my family no one ever got was interested in this field. My first contact with photography was on my grandma’s couch where I spent endless afternoons sitting with her and looking at huge albums full of old pictures. I remember I could just go on forever, listening to her stories about the people in the pictures. With her voice in my ear, I kept on passionately watching their faces, eyes, smiles, attitudes, and the way they dressed. I couldn’t belive how those silent pieces of film could tell me so much about someone that I never met. That’s how I got fascinated and I think about how that magical frozen moment from another time could have been so powerful, timeless and endlessly beautiful. Then when I was studying at the University of Political Sciences and Journalism, I got passionate about photojournalism, and I started to work as a photo editor in a small press agency. I liked looking at photographs but I never tried to take them. But inn 2010, something changed. It’s funny because many musicians will tell they learned to play guitar to hook up with girls and I learned how to take photos because I liked a photographer! Simple as that. Let’s say that was the moment this passion bloomed into my hands. I still remember the power and how happy I was after developing my first film shot with a analog camera on my first trip to Africa. Can you believe a small black magic box traps lives, smiles, and emotions? I need to take photos, no matter what. It’s my way of stopping time, expressing myself and telling a story, whatever it is.

  1. Being such a talented Photographer, what inspires you most?

Music inspires me a lot. Bjork, Arcade Fire, Bob Dylan, Prokoviev, Wagner,  and jazz music. Poetry and literature inspires me a lot as well. Walt Whitman, Nabokov and countless others. Movies as well! Federico Fellini’s magic and tragic world. Also, Terence Malik’s work is dope. Some photographers’ work guided me thorugh my path and always will. Diane Arbus, Letizia Battaglia and Sebastiao Salgado influenced me with their amazing stories and incredible talent.

  1. Where are you right now? Living the dream or searching for the right path?

Still fighting to find my right path. I guess it’s a long way away!

  1. How living in Tuscany, one of the most beautiful places on earth, influences your work?

Well, we get used to beauty too easily. We tend to take it for granted and sometimes we even ignore it. But of course, the place where we are born or where we lived, influences our whole life. When you grow up surrounded by beauty, it’s too easy to find it. However, when you don’t see it, you go looking for it. A good photographer can be born everywhere in the world because in the end, it doesn’t really matter where you come from but what you are looking at. Photography in about a good eye, composition, and frame. You can grow by watching tons of good stuff. It’s just like an education but it’s also about many other things like your interests, fears, and mood. In fact every picture we take, could be a mountain, a portait or a revolution is the result of everything you’ve read, listened to, saw, felt, and experienced. It’s your own lens of reality. That’s why if ten photographers take photos of the same things, we will surely get ten different angles.

  1. Which person influenced you most, through your life journey ?

My aunt Laura. She’s not really my relative but we chosed each other as aunt and niece when I was 18. Laura is an amazing, clever, crazy and generous woman that inspired me and changed my life. I met her on my first trip to Chicago. She taught me so many things, especially that only love is worth living for. No matter what your family looks like, you can build a new family, as we did. My dad also inspired me, even if i didn’t realize it until a few years ago. I took from him my rebel vision, my wildest side, my anti conformist spirit, and my love for nature and animals. Enrico Frontini, a doctor I met a few years ago, inspires me because he chose to be a pediatric doctor in the poorest countries of Earth He gave so much to the others and lived his life in the bravest way. I was lucky enough to became his collegue for an educational program he’s running for young students which deals with environmental issues and social justice.

  1. If you could shout anything to the that world would be…

GUYS COME ON!! Wars, power, terrorism, money?? We are wasting our planet!!!! And if they would give me the mic once again, I would add: USE YOUR BRAIN. Then I would steal it once more to yell: Live in peace!

  1. What Makes you Trully Happy?

Being creative. Shooting beautiful photos. Swimming with my dogs. Make someone happy. Summer storms. Eating figs from the tree.

  1. If you were not human you would be…

Probably an alien. I would be so f—-king jealous of this land, sun, stars, beauty of little human beings J

  1. What´s Azzurra Biggest Dream?

Live a fulfilling life, and love fiercley. Do something good with my life and stay human. Go back under the starry giant sky in Africa again.