Professional photography & team

Francesco Majo is an advertising & food photographer. His work reflects the places where he lived most, Milan, London, Paris, Barcelona. Francesco studied photography at IED in Milan and later he got a travel journalism degree in London.
His challenge is to transform the ordinary into extraordinary trying always to make food and lifestyle photography an art expression.

For more than twenty years he has contributed to create the visual identity of many international brands and magazines.

Since the very beginning of his career he has been working, as a team, with Nataly Cadavid, a Colombian creative stylist and photographer.
The duo are married, have 4 kids a dog and few cats.
They love moving from a country to another enjoying and exploring new places and different cultures.

They offer, in-house high end photography, film direction, retouching, video editing, food styling and prop styling and of course they have access to a large choice of props, backgrounds, linens etc.

AWARDS:

2017: Golden Palm @ MEXICO INTERNATIONAL FILM under Narrative Short Competition category with ” WATER EMOTIONS ” short film

2016 1st prize @ FESTIVAL INTERNATIONALE DE LA PHOTO CULINAIRE ( PARIS NOV 2016 ) / project: THE TABLE

2013 1st prize @ FESTIVAL INTERNATIONALE DE LA PHOTO CULINAIRE ( PARIS NOV 2013 ) / project: NATURAL JEWELS

2006 INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING AWARDS – NEW YORK FESTIVAL ADV TRE MARIE Croissanterie MOON – Agency Lorenzo Marini & Associati – Creative Director: Mauro Maniscalco

2006 MOBIUS – ADV TRE MARIE – Agency Lorenzo Marini & Associati

Selected clients:

Elle, GQ, House&Garden, Psychologies Mag, Sale&Pepe, Saveurs, Vogue Gioiello, Wine Enthusiast,  Alli, Algida, Autogrill, Bertolli, Bo Frost, Bonne Maman, Buitoni, Carrefour, Ducros / Shwartz, Findus, KitchenAid, Krikita, Knorr, Kraft Foods Italy and Spain, Leclerc, Giovanni Rana, Mondelez, M&Ms, Nadec, Nescafè, Perugina,  Sainsbury’s, Sony Playstation, Swatch, Tyson, Tre Marie, Unilever, Vahiné, Wall’s and agencies such as Australie, 1HQ, Athem, Future Brand, Grey Paris, Leo Burnett, Lorenzo Marini, JKR, JWT, Mc Cann  Ericksson, MRM, Oveja Negra, Saatchi&Saatchi, RBA, Saatchi Gad, Vibrand, WCRS, Young & Rubicam.

FRANCESCO MAJO: SURREALISM-POP STYLE PHOTOGRAPHY

I became interested in photography at an early age, maybe around the age of 5. Over the early years, it became a passion and then turned into a profession.

I’ve always been inspired to express a different meaning of the world than the one that is represented. I express reality by showing a different dimension. The lens lets me play on two levels of what is “real”; the objective and the interpretative.

When I was a child I used to watch people on the beach and I would see shadows in them. I would see mythological figures in animals.

I’ve always wanted to attribute a different meaning to a form from its common one, in order to express a different perspective or concept. In some of my older work, human bodies are converted and “set” forming an integral part of the furniture.

The way I express my art is by communicating ideas where its verbal expression is limited. Notes that I jot down are turned into sketches. As a photographer with 25 years of practice professionally, my artistic choices have been greatly influenced. I often work on the same specific themes. The surrealism-pop style is the best way I can express my vision of the world, with regard to the hyper-consumeristic society we live in.

Food advertising themes that  I have worked on in the past, are elaborated and transformed. The subject matter is often decontextualized. For example, the preparatory shots for Wall’s ice cream, in various Oreo flavours etc., have become photographs of plants in a vase, a jellyfish deep in the sea, a chameleon… 

My approach turns subjects into new objects. The hyper-consumerism that I criticize stems from advertising. The same techniques are used but the paradox is not meant to be a pure provocation but perhaps the only means of escape, often by recycling materials that has been consumed and thrown away by people.

The hands transformed into animals by the Italian body painter Guido Daniele, become the very vehicle of the advertising message that devours the hypothetical advertised object (in my case an ice cream from the McDonalds chain where the logo has been erased). I love scenes with animals: for me they represent the purity of instinct free from any media influence, the unbroken foundations of the human soul, the values of tolerance and inclusion in which I believe.

The “Birth” series represents the birth of man as a predestined consumer: when he is born he is already old and consumed by the false desires created by advertising. To this ‘old’ someone gives him a smartphone and a well-known carbonated and sweetened drink.

The imaginary that I propose springs from the set of relationships that each individual has with his physical and mental environment, with reality that turns into a representation that has the ability to make individuals act in a certain way. 

The contents of the imaginary given by memories, dreams, beliefs, myths and objects have in my opinion a concrete impact on people also on an emotional level. 

The imaginary for me is the substratum of our ‘Thought’ and is composed of dreams, symbols and images that represent a sort of fantasy world that we humans cannot do without. 

My artistic research and its photographic expressions probe the double value, more than the ambivalence, of the meanings of man’s “global” imaginary in the context of today’s globalised world.