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Travel

Literary

Lele Saveri is the photo editor of Vice Italy. He also happens to be one of our favorite photographers. We spoke to him about his new trilogy of zines, horror films, and pirating videos in Rome.

Lele Saveri is the photo editor of

Vice

Italy. He also happens to be one of our favourite photographers. We spoke to him about his new trilogy of zines, horror films, and pirating videos in Rome.

Vice: So, Lele. What are your new zines about?

Lele Saveri:

They are inspired by a trilogy of films by Lucio Fulci called

Gates of Hell

which he directed between 1980 and ’81. I called them

Trilogia della Morte

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, which translates as

Trilogy of Death

. The movies are called

E tu vivrai nel terrore

(or

The Beyond

),

Paura nella citta dei morti viventi

(

City of the Living Dead

) and

Quella villa accanto al cimitero

(

The House by the Cemetery

) and they kind of cover the three key different aspects of horror movies: zombies, ghosts and monsters.

And where are the photos in the zines taken?

The pictures in the zines were taken everywhere I have been in the past five or six years. They’re mostly photographs of monsters and ghosts I see (or imagine) in the street.

I take it you’re a big horror fan then?

I’ve been into the horror film genre since I was ten years old, when I first watched

Profondo rosso

by Dario Argento. I’m from Rome, so for my 12th birthday I had a little day trip to his shop in town. I lived in the suburb and for me town was really far. Around that time I also used to duplicate horror videos and rent the copies to my friends.

I had, by then, started taking pictures of everything that seemed scary in any way, and when I got the chance to make some zines that Dashwood Books would sell at the New York art-book fair, I decided to use some of those images. Plus the fair was in November, the month of the dead.

Do you think a photo needs to tell a story?

To me a photo can be very pretty with composition, lighting, aesthetics and all that stuff, but I come from a very documentary-based background, so if that picture doesn’t say anything, I’m often not that interested. At the same time, I don’t like to see a photographer’s point of view too much, like those pictures that are somehow forced into a meaning, like a portrait of a cop with graffiti in the background that says “scum” or something like that. It’s too easy. I really like pictures that are more elusive, that make you wonder.

E tu vivrai nel terrore, Paura nella citta dei morti viventi and Quella villa accanto al cimitero are out now published by Dashwood Books. For more, visit dashwoodbooks.com.