Traveling, taking pictures and feeling the real Australia. It looks like the perfect life and in a way it is. This is what the photographer, 24 years old, Davide Degano, from a small town near Udine in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli, has been doing for the past two years in Australia. He left Italy with his camera, not one word of English and a big desire to discover not only a new continent but also new people.
Why Australia? “London was too close and, in a moment of difficulty and loneliness, I could be home in a couple of hours – he says – whereas living on the other side of the world forced me to challenge myself and to cope with every problem and become more mature and aware.”
Davide is always looking for something: behind every face, every person and every place there is a story – No matter what! Davide captures the soul of every moment and every situation. His thirst for knowledge comes from his Rastafarian faith. No prejudice, respect for diversity and the belief of being part of a big community: the entire world. “My passion for photography is due to the fact that I love to blend things – he explains – and show through my camera the cultural diversity of places that I’ve seen, music that I’ve danced and people that I’ve met.”
The first place that he visited was Byron Bay, where he decided to study English (thanks to Just Australia), live, work on a farm he also worked as photographer for many events, before moving to Melbourne for one year. “If it were for me I would live my entire life in Byron Bay thanks to the energy that place emanates – he explains – but I needed to see new places.”
When he moved to Melbourne he started a very interesting project: taking pictures in the hurry of everyday life of peoplethat nobody notices: homeless, street artists, happy people, sad people, babies, families, businessmen. He created a portrait of routine. Thanks to this project, he obtained many job offers and he started working for Just Australia as the official photographer.
“This experience in Australia taught me so many things – he says – and I feel I am a different person, I feel stronger, more open minded and more complete as a person. I also learnt that nothing just happens to you, you have to deserve it, and if you don’t know English you have to study a lot and be modest and respectful of the people who surround you”.
Now his English is perfect, this is because he studied and he spent his time not only with Italian but mostly with international people. Thanks to his experience in Australia, he was accepted at one of the most important university’s in the world for the pho- tography industry: KABK, the Royal Academy of Art in Holland. Davide’s good level of English, quality and the intensity of his pictures speak for themselves.
