Marco Tenaglia divides his time between Rome and New York, and has had his work featured in publications such as GQ, Chaos, and Muse Mag, and has done commercial work for numerous big clients. That might sound like the dream career for many, but for Marco that wasn’t the life he wanted: “- I was very young when I started photographing. I took my first photos when I was 8, and after that I’ve always had a love and hate relationship with photography, until in 1996 when I started shooting professionally. In the beginning I was only shooting b&w portraits on film, and working in my dark room do develop and print, then later on I switched to digital and photo editing, and did a lot of commercial work. Last year I told myself, it’s enough, I wasn’t happy with what I was doing. I took my “sabbatical year” and I switched completely back to my origin.”

Now Marco is known for shooting beautiful black and white photos, without ever using digital retouching tools like photoshop: “- My philosophy is that a great photographer shouldn’t need to retouch his photographs,” he says, and when I ask him about his inspirations he continues: “- I’m inspired by old photographs, old movies, I look at the photographers of the past as I feel the photography of our era is too manipulated.”

Here’s some of his work:

Check out his portfolio here.