Close crops and gloriously stubbly hairlines by Francesco Nazardo

It’s fascinating to see how photography veers from one trend to another, creating a varying zigzag-shaped trajectory in the process. In this case, photographer Francesco Nazardo has moved away from crowded landscapes and busy scenes, and his desire to clear out the clutter has led to him to start using very close crops – a pattern he saw beginning to emerge in his work around two years ago.

“It is a process based on intuition rather than on a conceptual logic,” he explains. “Perhaps it is a response to a lot of images that I see nowadays that tend to aim to create a mood, an atmosphere, or express a lifestyle. Zooming in on subjects can somehow leave a lot of decorative aspects out of a picture.” The result is a collection of glimpses of Francesco’s subjects. Hairlines feature heavily, whether fresh from a shape-up or bearing wispy tufts of red hair, viewed so closely as to appear almost erotic. Similarly hemlines, seams and textures appear to jump out of his photographs, demanding attention away from oft-exposed facial expressions and poses.

Francesco was born in Milan and moved to London, then New York and now to Lausanne in Switzerland to study for an MA in visuals arts at ECAL, clocking up a client list including Dazed and Confused, Bloomberg Businessweek and i-D in the process.