Vittorio Storaro's images remain indelibly etched both on celluloid and in our memories, in a series of films that are important or audacious in their photographic dimension, proclaiming this legendary cinematographer to be a truly leading figure in the art of film. From the Italian countryside of The Spider's Stratagem to the jungle of the cities in Apocalypse Now and the sumptuousness of the Forbidden City in The Last Emperor to the comic book atmosphere of Dick Tracy cinematographer Storaro uses light and motion to create a new world each time. Jetting between Europe and America, in modern films and in period films, he experiments constantly. It is as though he is trying to forget what he learnt, as though he is shooting his first film, as he himself says, but always through the prism of the director with whom he is working.

One of the greatest visual artists in cinema history, it is almost self evident that he should receive the titles of the only living director of photography who has won three Oscars and the second European to have been honoured with the American Society of Cinematographers' Lifetime Achievement Award. He describes his work as "writing with light and motion." He considers that with this term he describes "the real meaning of what we are attempting to accomplish.We are writing stories with light and darkness, motion and colors. It is a language with its own vocabulary and unlimited possibilities for expressing our inner thoughts and feelings." Vittorio Storaro takes an active, fundamental and creative part in the films as a craftsman who leaves his imprint on everything he depicts:"The cinema never has the reality of a painting or a photograph because you make decisions about what the audience should see, hear and how it is presented to them.You make choices which super-impose your own interpretations of reality."

These multiple interpretations of reality, the special way in which he superimposes the contemporary sensibility of a European and international artist and his extraordinary and always innovative use of technology make up the identity of the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The exhibition of his photographs completes the portrait of the man and his pursuits. The Thessaloniki Film Festival plays host to the exhibition of Vittorio Storaro's photographs and in so doing provides the Greek public with the possibility of getting to know yet another side of this brilliant cinematographer.

Despina Mouzaki