Surfing In Italy by Tommaso Pardini
“Good Food, Wines, Art, wonderful landscapes, football, Mafia and fashion. This is what could jump to your mind when you think about Italy.”
But there’s more than that. For example, we've got waves and you can surf too!
I’m Tommaso Pardini, raised by the waves in Versilia, a small piece of earth based in the northwest of Tuscany, I started photographing 5 years ago. Surf has always been one of my loves, when I left professional footballing because of a serious injury, I moved to London for a year where I discovered my passion for photography.
Back in Italy I decided to start photographing my friends surfing, and since then I’ve tried to tell something about the turbulent love story that Italians have with surfing. Is not easy to be a surf photographer in Italy, best waves come with the freezing cold, and the best light for shooting is early in the morning, many times I found myself swimming at sunrise when it was 0º outside.
To take a good shot in Italy is 100 times harder than everywhere else, but when you make it, the satisfaction is huge.
Italian surf scene is growing faster than we could ever be expecting, groms have started to rip and we have a surfer in the WCT.
Between the war of angry conservative locals and next generation fashion addicted, content creator and kooks, I will keep on telling my story, today, tomorrow and forever.
