Born in Florence, Italy, Marco Russo fell in love with photography at an early age. 

Throughout the years, photography has been his passion, almost as if the camera were an essential part of seeing. There is a clear distinction in his work between “seeing” and “looking” which in everyday life, and for almost all of us, remains implicit and occult.

In his work, Marco Russo “sees”. He refuses the overly facile and predictable vulgate of the digital camera and rediscovers a more classic and discriminating valence of black and white.

Describing the artist’s body of work, the Canadian author and art critic, Deirdre Kelly, wrote:

“Marco Russo’s evocative black and white photographs talk. They speak in the language of shadow and light to evoke contrasting narrative impulses within a dynamic composition… Born of a playful and probing curiosity, Russo’s images capture the true essence of their subject matter while conveying something bigger than the mere fact oftheir existence.”

The moment is always “captured”, almost caught as a surprise as it happens. It is however picked up by the Florentine photographer, who may have been courting the moment at great length, waiting patiently for something to take place in a split second, when the shutter in its instantaneous click momentarily blinds the camera’s eye. The results are ironic images, but also tender and full of affectionate attention, part of a world still capable of inventing itself and giving moments full of beauty and charm.

In 2012, Russo’s photographs were included in the exhibition Figuration at Berenson in Toronto, as part of a remarkable group of artists — Rainer Fetting, Oskar Kokoschka, Toulouse Lautrec and Andy Warhol — tied together by the human form. The same year Giulio Cappellini hosted his solo exhibition in Paris.

Since then, his work has being exhibited throughout the world including New Delhi, Doha, Paris, Monaco, Rome, Milan, Colonia, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai.

Marco Russo has collaborated with and received commissions from numerous fashion houses including Bulgari, Fendi, Aran, Alberta Ferretti and Pollini. His photographs have been featured in Vanity Fair, Conde’ Nast, L’officiel Italia and Prestige Hong Kong.

The artist was singularly honored by his own country in 2010, when his work was included in the permanent collection of the Alinari Museum in Florence.