Swiss-Italian photographer Roberto Greco transforms stillness into living poetry, guided by his roots as a horticulturist. His work bridges organic sensibility with aesthetic precision, crafting images that breathe between nature and luxury. From Givenchy to YSL, his visual language reveals beauty not captured—but cultivated.
Between nature and beauty, Swiss-Italian photographer Roberto Greco cultivates images that seem to breathe, transforming stillness into living poetry. Rooted in his early vocation as a horticulturist, his work carries an organic sensibility toward form, texture, and the ephemeral. Whether capturing a petal’s translucence or the reflective surface of crystal, he moves fluidly between natural grace and aesthetic precision. Across his personal projects and collaborations with houses such as Givenchy, Armani, Kylie Jenner and YSL, Greco composes a seamless dialogue between nature, art, and luxury, where each image feels both instinctive and meticulously arranged. In this conversation, he opens the doors to his ever-blooming world of creation.
With your background in horticulture, a world rooted in patience, observation, and organic form, how has that early connection with nature shaped your vision as a photographer?
Nature can make you believe you’re in control, until it surprises you with its own shapes and decisions, and as you said, it’s all about patience and careful observation. It’s quite similar to the way I work with light in my studio when shooting still life. I can shape it, but only up to a point. There’s no formula you can just repeat, each object has its own mood, its own “needs.” And that’s exactly what I’m after: something organic, whether it’s a flower or a perfume bottle.
If your photographs had a scent, what would they smell like? Do you remember the first plant, flower, or the most luminous shade of green that truly captivated you? Does that memory still echo through your creative process, or has your source of inspiration evolved into something more abstract over time?
Your question is very fitting, because I’m a huge perfume collector – I have stopped counting, but I probably have over 900 bottles by now – from the most common scent to the rare unicorn piece I spent years tracking down on the secondary market.
I’ve been working with scent in my artistic practice since 2014. It all begins with the series « Morbidezza » (a kind of animal herbarium) when I started incorporating odors like dried flowers, horse manure, and perfume blends into my solo exhibitions in galleries. The public was very curious and receptive to this unusual way to enter a photographic work in an art space, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with the result.
Eventually, I began collaborating with perfumers to « translate » a specific photo series in a perfume, which I like to call Objet parfumant. (So far, I’ve created 3 perfumes, each produced in limited edition, and I’m currently working on a new one). The creative process can take 2 or 3 years, during which I work hand in hand with the perfumer.
The synesthetic process behind image and scent is remarkably similar: for example, when I ask a perfumer to achieve a warm and fluffy texture or a metallic ethereal note, I know I had -or will have- the same intention with light and composition in the ongoing photo series. What I love in those exchanges with perfumers is the need to put words to something intangible, something that doesn’t have an exact term to describe it.
It’s the same mindset I have before starting a series: when I’m chasing a specific result, I think in terms of texture, density, and structure. Light itself becomes almost physical. For me, it’s all about the sensory dimension.
Still life photography often risks stillness, yet your compositions feel alive, as if they breathe. What guides you in achieving that subtle sense of movement and vitality within an image? In your personal work, you often speak of “drawer-images”, photographs that seem to conceal intimate narratives or symbolic layers. Could you elaborate on this idea? What kind of inner questions or recurring themes tend to surface through these hidden images?
My still life backgrounds come mostly from the world of painting, spanning a wide spectrum from Pieter Claez to Gerhard Richter. The sensorial richness of these works has always captivated me. For instance, when I look at a 17th-century still life, I know it will take time to truly understand and absorb some of its meaning, full of symbolism and hidden messages (that could not be openly expressed without risking censorship). This way of reading imposes a rhythm; it’s as if the painter is the choreographer and you are the dancer!
Even though I no longer create this kind of vanitas anymore, I can’t deny the influence it has had on my work, nor the passion it has instilled in me for details and light. I guess that’s why I often find myself chasing the same subtle rhythm in my photographs, what I like to call “drawer-image”, something that reveals itself little by little, each time you look at it. It’s about offering more than one way to enter a vision, integrating duality in my work the same way I envisage life: finding the balance where imperfection flirts with perfection, brutality with delicacy. Where everything converges to create a tactile, almost palpable result, and trying to capture a feeling.
Do your portraits ever become mirrors? Do you recognize fragments of yourself within the people you photograph?
Yes and no. I’m not entirely sure. The process is too intimate and mutual to stay completely detached from who I am, yet at the same time, I rely on the models to express ideas that go beyond myself. It can become a way to question societal notions of beauty, to reflect on life and death, or to explore the pressures surrounding masculinity, as in Be a Man, my most recent personal work, created in 2024.
But yes, each portrait is a dialogue between the model and me, and later between the viewer and me. I sometimes try to hold up a mirror to the viewer, more than on myself. In the end, I’m always present, in one form or another. So, to answer your question : it’s more a yes than a no.
Recently, your experiments with AI have opened a new dimension in your practice, animating still photographs into fluid, hybrid forms. What inspired you to merge technology with such a deeply organic visual language?
When I first watched American Beauty directed by Sam Mendes (1999), I was moved by a particular scene : a simple white plastic bag caught in a gentle whirlwind near a house, dancing in the air among falling leaves. The sheer grace of something so ordinary touched me deeply. It actually made me buy a small pocket camera (I was late getting a phone with a camera!) and start filming everything around me. I’ve always loved editing those little videos, making clips for musician friends or simply for myself.
More recently, I discovered a way to merge my own still images with machine intelligence to create subtle animations. I’ve always lived surrounded by music, I listen to it from the moment I wake up until late at night, so finding the perfect soundtrack to match the motion is something I’ve always loved, and I’m thrilled to have found a way to play with it again.
But there’s a downside: the possibilities feel infinite, and my obsession with detail keeps me from working quickly. I often get swallowed by the machine vortex when I experiment with this medium. Still, it’s the best way I’ve found a way to work with AI, it’s like an extra pair of hands. This approach allows me to extend my own sensibility, to play and experiment. The tools may have changed, but the search for rhythm, nuance, and beauty remains the same.
When someone encounters your work, whether a perfume bottle, a flower, or a portrait, what do you hope they feel rather than simply see?
It depends on the context. If it’s a digital viewing, I wish to offer just enough “dopamine food” to hold someone’s attention for more than a second – something I may have spent hours or even days creating – because I’m fairly sure they will eventually discover the small details in my “drawer-image”, which I mentioned earlier in the interview.
As for hope, I don’t really wish for anything specific that they might feel, cause hope can be a tricky companion in the act of making.
And in a gallery, I simply wish for a slower encounter, that the viewer resists the urge to scroll with their minds as we do with our screens, since I conceive my work as existing beyond the two-dimensional.
That said, I’m not always in a contemplative state myself when I encounter a work, it’s a matter of sensitivity. There is no obligation, nor any perfect way to feel an artwork, so I fully accept that it can be experienced in any way
Credits:
Photography: Roberto Greco/ @roberto__greco
Flower designer: Thyrse / @thyrse.paris
Words: Leslie Guerra Ayala / @leslieguerraa
