top of page
INTERVIEW
Stefano Viani
Göttingen, Germany
My name is Stefano Viani. I live in Göttingen, Germany, and I photograph people who are trying to develop an identity of their own and to live by their own rules — in the studio, out on the road, and in places where no one is watching. Most of my work is black and white.
WHO IS
WATCHING?
Belongs to the studio, where I control everything: light, pose, composition. It is a five-part series about the gaze — and about who here is the object and who is the subject.
.jpg)
.jpg)
What's your signature as a photographer?
I photograph from inside the worlds I show, not from the doorway. That is probably the whole signature.
An image of mine has worked when you can feel the life behind it. Not the perfect light, not the technically clean solution — the decision someone made. The scar that tells a story. What freedom costs.
How would you describe your visual style in three words?
Quiet. Graphic. Ambiguous.
Quiet, because nothing in my images is loud. Graphic, because black and white strips a scene down to what carries it: light, form, decision. Ambiguous, because in these images the viewer becomes visible too — you are not standing safely outside the frame, and the picture won't tell you where you stand.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Tell us the story behind one image you'll never forget.
It started over a coffee. I was meeting a model to prepare a different shoot, and she mentioned that she would like to do something with a catsuit. I went home with that — not with the outfit, with the question. What does a catsuit actually stand for? Who invented that meaning, and whom does it serve? It landed exactly where my work keeps circling: sexuality as the oldest lever of control.
Then she cancelled. The reasons were thin, and I won't pretend otherwise. I kept the concept and went looking for the right person for it. I found Mina Mi.
We shot on the ninth of June 2026, in a rented studio in Hamburg. I brought everything with me: the catsuit, the mask, the fake blood, the props. Nothing that day was improvised — the series was planned down to the last object, and it went as planned. The suit fit Mina as though it had been made for her.
What was not planned for: a studio I didn't know, a flash system I had never touched, and a woman I had never worked with. Three unknowns in a single day. You either trust that or you stay home.
If I have to name one frame, it is the one with the camera — Who Is the Object? It is the strongest image visually. But it doesn't stand alone, and none of the others do either. The five belong together and tell one story; there is no version of it with one missing.
And when the series was in the box, we kept going and made pictures nobody had planned at all. Those days are rare.
Walk us through your creative process — from concept to final edit.
It starts with a sentence, not with a picture. I write before I photograph. If I can't say what a series is asking, there is nothing to light yet.
Then come the objects. In Who Is Watching? every prop is a code someone else invented: latex, the mask, the heels, the white king, the camera pointed back at you. I don't invent those meanings — I put them in one frame and let them collide.
On the shooting day the plan is a foundation, not a prefab house. I light precisely, and then I wait for the person to show herself. That moment always comes, and it never comes on schedule.
In editing I take away rather than add. Reduced palette, black and white, nothing decorative left standing. The last question in front of the screen is always the same: is the person still carrying this image, or is the symbol carrying it? If it's the symbol, the picture has become an illustration — and I let it go, however much work is in it.
What's the most unexpected thing photography has taught you?
Patience is a technique, not a virtue. For years I thought a photograph was something you take. It isn't — it's something you wait for while everything is already set up. I photograph worlds I have belonged to for decades, and it still took years before the images were ready. The camera didn't teach me to see faster. It taught me to stay longer.
Photography is
not simply about looking at someone—it is about becoming aware that you are also being looked at, and questioning the identities, rules, and expectations that shape the way you see yourself.
"
"
.jpg)
What do people feel when they see your work — and what do you want them to feel?
People tell me my images are calm, and that something inside them is not calm at all. I like that.
What I want is simpler: I want you to notice that you are being looked at. The figure in Who Is Watching? never disappears from the frame. In the first image she offers herself — as bait. She is the hunter, not the hunted, and by the time you have understood that, you are already inside the picture.
Most of us have been watched for so long that we have quietly taken over the job ourselves. We guard ourselves. And sexuality is where that grip is oldest: church and state have used it as a lever for centuries, so thoroughly and for so long that hardly anyone still notices the hand on the lever. I don't want to explain any of that in a photograph. I want you to feel it for a second — and then ask yourself who taught you to control yourself, and who handed you a ready-made identity to wear instead of becoming someone of your own.
What do you want your work to say about you, even when you're not in the room?
That I stood on the side of people.
I don't want my images to say look what he can do. Technique is a means; anyone can learn it. I would rather someone stands in front of a picture in ten years and thinks: whoever made this took people seriously. He asked the questions that matter, because he believed in people's potential.
If that comes through, the rest can be forgotten.
What's something about you people don't usually see in your work — but should?
That I am an idealist, and that I have stayed one.
My images look controlled — the light, the composition, the reduced palette, all of it deliberate. What you don't see is that none of it comes from calm alone. I am calm, and I am very stubborn. I still believe a picture can move something in a person, and I have been told often enough how naive that is.
I would rather be naive in that direction than clever in the other.
Closing Note:
Where to see the work
The complete series and my other work: stefanoviani.art
Who Is Watching? is available in three forms: open-edition prints, signed and numbered fine-art editions on aluminium dibond in four sizes — limited to fifteen per format, each with a certificate of authenticity — and a single original, 1/1, on request.
bottom of page