The Echo Of The Shell

Michelangelo Cao was born in Cagliari (Italy) in 1984. He completed his university studies in Padua, where he lived until 2015. A keen photographer since he was a teenager, he has developed and refined his photographic skills working and learning together with several Italian and British photographers including Moreno Segafredo, Ferdinando Fasolo, Giampaolo Romagnosi and Simon Murison-Bowie.

Since 2010 he has collaborated with the photography group mignon, presenting his work in both solo and collective exhibitions. A selection of his photographs was included in 20 mignon, an anthology commemorating the first twenty years of the group’s activities in 2016, and in the 25th issue of The Mays anthology.

After moving to the UK for his postgraduate studies in 2016, Michelangelo has engaged with the vibrant Oxford photographic scene, taking an active part in the Oxford Photographers Group, participating in and helping to organise exhibitions. Michelangelo works exclusively with black and white film cameras. His photography projects focus on street and documentary topics, portraits and landscapes. He has a deep interest in analogue techniques, developing and printing his photographs in his own darkroom.

The Echo of the Shell is the first solo UK exhibition of Italian photographer Michelangelo Cao based on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. In 2015, Michelangelo embarked on a spiritual journey aiming to find new awareness and enlightenment that would help him through some life-changing decisions. Far from familiar faces and places, he wanted to experience silence both within and around him, to live through something authentic down to its intrinsic essence and absolute simplicity. With this resolution in mind, the author walked the ancient “Way of the Stars”, from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the northern regions of rural Spain. This exhibition of black and white analogue photographs follows in the footsteps of a modern pilgrim offering to the audience a collection of portraits, street scenes and landscapes that represent the kaleidoscope of encounters, images and emotions, faithfully documented by Michelangelo’s camera.