THE SILENT MOUNTAIN - An interview with Giovanni Favero

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For Giovanni Favero—the author of the stunning images of the Dolomites featured in these pages—photography has never been an instinctive gesture nor a mere exercise in style. It is, above all, an act of attention. It is a gaze that rests upon the world and decides whether it is worth freezing in time. His relationship with the image began over fifty years ago, almost by chance, while leafing through books that did not explicitly deal with photography but contained images capable of striking a chord within him.

From there, a simple and decisive question arose: how can one stop time?

Over the years, the answer has evolved into a practice. First with film, then with digital, but always following the same method: looking first with the eyes, without the camera. The framing is born mentally, as a discipline practiced long before the technical execution. It is a rigor learned back when every shot had a cost, when film demanded slowness and responsibility. It is a habit that Giovanni has never abandoned, not even today in an era dominated by the overproduction of images.

For him, photography is not about accumulation, but about choice. Shooting less means thinking more.

It means waiting for the right light, accepting that not everything must be photographed, and recognizing that some images exist only in memory. "There are moments," he says, "where raising the camera would mean losing the real scene." In those cases, he prefers not to shoot: the image remains imprinted in the mind, like a private photograph—invisible, yet no less powerful.

This focus on time and light is central to his landscapes, particularly in the Dolomites, which he always photographs by imagining them already in black and white. Black and white is not a nostalgic choice, but a precise linguistic one. It eliminates the distraction of color and forces the eye to engage with shapes, shadows, and depth. This is a legacy passed down from the great masters of photography: Ansel Adams for landscapes, with his rigorous work on the zone system and grayscale; and Henri Cartier-Bresson for daily life, for that concept of the "decisive moment" that is recognized rather than constructed.

Indeed, when he photographs people, instinct comes into play. The landscape grants time; people do not. A minimal movement is enough for everything to change. Some of his most successful images were born this way, in an unrepeatable second. Others, conversely, were never taken because the camera wasn't at hand. Yet, those too are part of his inner archive.

Travel is the other fundamental pillar of his work. Not as a collection of exotic locations, but as a quest. To travel means to document, to bring home a visual memory, and to build a coherent narrative over time. Among all his journeys, the one that left the deepest mark was his trip to the American Great West in the early 2000s: a long-cherished dream, experienced as a gift to himself and a tribute to his father’s memory, who had known those places only through Western movies.

Giovanni has never photographed with an audience in mind. His images are first archived, then forgotten, and finally revisited years later, once the initial emotion has settled. Only then does it become clear which photographs stand the test of time. From this slow process, his exhibitions are born—the most recent, titled Sguardi oltre la soglia (Gazes Beyond the Threshold), concluded on February 1st at the Teatro Accademico in Castelfranco—not from a desire for visibility, but from a necessity of expression.

He views social media as a distortion of photographic culture: powerful tools, yet often used without awareness, turning images into immediate consumption.

His photography moves in the opposite direction. It does not seek effect, it does not construct the scene, and it does not force a message. Instead, it seeks a form of silent truth. To stop time, yes—but only when that time has something meaningful to say.