Silvia Cleri was born in Rome in 1978 and still lives and works there. She began taking photographs on film at seventeen, when she was given her first reflex camera, and built on it with courses, manuals and workshops until 2010, when she changed course in her working life and became a professional photographer. Photography is her only full-time job. She belongs to the Italian photographers' associations ANFM and TAU Visual, and to ISPWP.
Her wedding work is reportage. Her FAQ says she prefers to tell the day discreetly, without altering or directing what happens, while still photographing the couple with anyone they ask for. On her English pages she calls herself a storyteller who loves real-life emotion, and writes that she never follows a set scheme at a wedding. Her published weddings move between warm colour and black and white: getting ready at home, church and civil ceremonies, street portraits in Rome and long dinners outdoors. Civil unions sit in the same portfolio as every other wedding; she writes that for her civil unions are weddings.
“I never follow rules when I shoot a wedding, but I keep my heart and eyes wide open to catch everything that happens in each unique story to tell.”
Silvia Cleri
She confirms only one wedding a day. For any event with more than 50 guests she works with a second professional photographer, which she describes as a guarantee for the couple and a way to add a second point of view. She shoots in RAW, and after the day she selects from roughly 5,000 frames taken by the two photographers, then adjusts exposure, contrast, colour and black and white without changing the moment, the place or the people.
Rome is home ground, and her published weddings run from S. Alessio, Prati, Ostiense, Castello della Castelluccia and Tenuta Pantano Borghese in the city to Ostia Antica, Tivoli, Fregene, Terracina, Labico and Lake Bracciano. She has also photographed weddings in Abruzzo, at Reale Castel di Sangro, and lists Puglia, Calabria, Marche, Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont among the regions she has worked in. She offers engagement shoots in Italy and around Europe, and couple and honeymoon sessions in Rome.
Couples receive their chosen photographs as high-resolution JPG files, delivered by web link or on a personalised USB stick; she does not set a fixed number, because the couple chooses it. She designs albums herself, from classic albums with mounted prints to digital photobooks and memory boxes, and offers fine art prints, canvases and panels.
