Maurizio Anzeri was born in Italy and now lives and works in London. The series featured below, Secondhand Portrait, is representative of image makers using the photograph as an object where the physical print and the image are examined and reinterpreted. Through needlework and embroidery, found family photographs are reinterpreted through embroidered designs and blocks of color, altering the original image to create new expressions.

I work with sewing, embroidery and drawing to explore the essence of signs in their physical manifestation. I take inspiration from my own personal experience and observation of how, in other cultures, bodies themselves are treated as living graphic symbols. I then use sewing and embroidery in a further attempt to re-signify, and mark the space with a man-made sign, a trace. I am interested in people’s stories and histories, and the relation between intimacy and the outer world.

A face in a frame in someone’s sitting room represents a whole lifetime, years later it will be washed away in a box in the rain. It’s poetic in a romantic way. So no, I don’t feel I was doing something wrong. I am re-celebrating anonymous people. In the moment that these photos were alive they are really important, I’m re-staging this. We’re so convinced that when we look at a photograph we are looking at reality, I’m adding another layer to this.