Today I’m going to talk about the artist Benedetta Ristori and her ongoing project called Lay Off. Benedetta Ristori is a freelance photographer currently based in Rome, Italy. Her work focuses on the tension between a form and the space it occupies, and the boundaries that contain it.

In 2016, a photo from her project Lay Off won the People category in the 16th Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest. That same year, the project was featured in Vogue Italia, Ignant, Il Muro, Positive Magazine, and other publications.

The photos shown above are all part of Lay Off. Ristori’s intention with this series is to observe and document moments in the lives of night workers, highlighting the one characteristic that often defines them: loneliness. Her work gives me a sense of timelessness and placelessness. She creates clear and concise compositions in extremely dense urban environments—a quality I deeply admire.

I’ve shot in Japan a few times myself, but I struggled to find an angle that captured the quiet, peaceful side of the city. Through my lens, it was always chaos and prosperity, never stillness. Ristori, on the other hand, manages to bring out that serenity in her photos.

I’ve always been drawn to night photography like this—where the photographer isn’t obsessed with technical perfection. Nowadays, many emerging photographers in Hong Kong are using ultra-high-resolution cameras and wide-angle lenses to capture every neon light possible. But to me, those images often feel soulless—like something a machine could easily reproduce under the same conditions.

Ristori’s work, by contrast, is quiet, subtle, and deeply emotional. It resonates more powerfully than many of the polished, flashy images out there. Her photography inspires me.

中文版本：

今天我想介绍的艺术家是 Benedetta Ristori，她正在进行的摄影项目叫做《Lay Off》。Benedetta Ristori 是一位自由摄影师，目前居住在意大利罗马。她的作品聚焦于“形态”与其所处空间之间的张力，以及形态如何被空间所限制和包围。

2016年，她的《Lay Off》系列中的一张照片获得了第16届《史密森尼杂志》摄影大赛人物组的冠军。同年，这个项目还被《意大利版Vogue》、Ignant、Il Muro、《Positive Magazine》等媒体刊登报道。

上面展示的这些照片都来自《Lay Off》这个系列。Ristori 想通过这个项目，窥探那些夜间工作者的生活瞬间，去分析和呈现出他们身上一个很常见的特征：孤独。她的作品给我一种超越时空的氛围感。在人口极度密集的城市中，她依然能够构建出清晰、简洁的构图。这一点我非常佩服。

我自己曾经在日本拍摄过几次，但总是找不到一个能够表现城市“宁静和平”一面的角度。透过我的镜头，看到的始终是城市的喧嚣与繁华，而不是片刻的安静。

我一直都很喜欢这种类型的夜间摄影——不是追求技术上的完美，而是有情绪、有故事。现在，香港有很多年轻摄影师，喜欢用超高像素的相机和超广角镜头去记录城市里每一个霓虹灯光的细节。但对我来说，那些照片常常显得很空洞——就像是在某个条件设定下，用机器也可以拍出来的作品。

相比之下，Ristori 的作品安静克制，却有着更强烈的情感表达。她的照片比那些“完美”得无可挑剔的图片更能打动我。她的作品真的非常鼓舞人心。