BIO

I’m Matteo Zanin, an Italian filmmaker and photographer born in Padua in 1986.

My background comes from cinema. I studied commercial directing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Milan, where I lived and worked for more than ten years, beginning my professional career across advertising, fashion, and visual production.

Photography, however, started for me as a way of looking before it became a profession. Through Street Photography, I learned to really observe people: their gestures, bodies, distances, expressions, and those accidental, unrepeatable moments when something authentic reveals itself without being staged.

That is still where I begin.

My visual world is shaped by very different influences, from Helmut Newton, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Steven Klein to Ren Hang, Peter Lindbergh, and Bruce Gilden. I’m drawn to the way they approach the subject, exploring the body, sensuality, reality, and imperfection without trying to tame them.

I spent several years in Barcelona, where I deepened my photographic research while studying photography and developing projects across artistic nude, fashion, and reportage. During that time, I created several photographic series and presented two exhibitions, focused respectively on artistic nude and reportage.

I’m now based again in Milan, where I continue to develop a visual language shaped by the meeting point between cinema and photography.

I’m primarily interested in people. The body as a language, the gaze as a form of connection, vulnerability, desire, and everyday life. I’m not necessarily looking for perfection or for a constructed image. I’m interested in that tension that appears when someone is simply themselves, even if only for a moment.

For me, photography is about connection. Observing, listening, and allowing myself to be surprised. Every project begins with the desire to tell something real — turning people, bodies, places, and fleeting moments into a story.

My work is instinctive, intimate, and narrative-driven. I’m looking for images that go beyond being beautiful — images with a presence, images that stay with you.