The photography of Alessandro Burato, a portrait photographer based in Tuscany and available throughout Italy.

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“Have you ever read Mr. Gwyn?”

A friend said it to me for the first time as we were leaving the B&B where I had photographed her.

“No,” I replied, curious.

“Read it — you’ll find someone you know.”

I spent half a summer afternoon getting to know her, camera in hand but rarely shooting. We laughed, joked, encouraged — and sometimes I got emotional — and I helped her feel at ease.

Sometimes I fell silent, kept my distance, almost trying to disappear, while through the viewfinder a woman, stiff and awkward at first, opened up, grew more comfortable, became fluid, moving one way then another, on her own or following my direction.

Without the arrogant, unrealistic pretense of capturing the “soul” of the person in front of me — an impossible task, especially for an atheist like me — I kept a personal diary in images, guided by a gaze that is sincere, empathetic, fascinated, and never judgmental.

I looked past modesty, beyond fears, and behind hands covering a heavy scar, the wrinkles around the eyes, a breast softened by motherhood, the bristly tuft like a cat’s back and, beneath it, a vertical smile — and when I called it that, you smiled too, and I photographed both.

Photography, for me, is a place of exchange, a mutual reaction, a dual portrait of photographer and subject, where one offers a bare gaze and the other offers themselves bare to it.

My name is Jasper Gwyn Alessandro Burato and I make portraits — on skin.

If you think I could work for you, or if the idea simply intrigues you, get in touch and let’s talk:

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