Gianluca Gobbi
The photographer behind La Bottega
Gianluca was born in Parma in November 1977 and grew up in Piacenza.
His career did not begin with photography in the most conventional way. He has worked ever since he was a boy. Starting out on construction sites as a welder, he soon found himself travelling abroad for work.
Between less-than-welcoming places on the outskirts of Spanish and German cities, and equally demanding situations (the kind that come with construction sites and hands-on field work) his desire to move, to leave that world behind, began to grow.
He wanted to see something more. Something beautiful.
Fate brought him to Cervinia one weekend, drawn there by his passion for snowboarding. It was in Cervinia that, for Gianluca, the saying “fortune favours the bold” truly came to life.
He was offered the chance to stay in that enchanted place among the mountains and work in a clothing store. Needless to say, he accepted. In an instant, he said goodbye to his job and family in Piacenza and moved to Cervinia.
He worked for years in the sportswear industry, eventually opening his own business. It was during those years, around 2005, that Gianluca began to develop a passion for photography. Days spent surrounded by breathtaking landscapes led him to teach himself everything he could about his Sony camera.
Then, as happened for everyone, everything changed. Covid arrived. Gianluca managed to sell his business, and from that moment on, photography became more than a passion: it became his way of seeing, telling and sharing the mountains.
It was then, in the silence of the mountains and the solitude of lockdown, that his passion for photography took on a new purpose. Captivated by the surreal beauty of the mountains during that extraordinary time, he began to specialize in landscape photography.
From that moment on, everything grew steadily, eventually leading to the opening of his own photographic gallery in the heart of Cervinia.
Federica Loiodice
Federica was born in Milan in November 1990. She studied Pharmacy and graduated as a pharmacist, a profession she has practised for more than ten years in the Milan area.
Since childhood, her life has been divided between the province of Milan and Cervinia, the place where she spent every holiday and every free moment with her family. For many years, Cervinia remained her place, her refuge until, as happens to everyone, we grow up and life takes us elsewhere.
At around the age of 26, she decided to move to Liguria, where she stayed for four years while continuing to work as a pharmacist. In 2020, she returned to the Milan area and, within the “new normal” created during the Covid era, resumed her work.
Everything changed when she met Gianluca, who drew her into a new world made of visions and perspectives and in an instant, that world became hers too.
Gianluca’s contagious enthusiasm for his work awakened in her a passion she had always carried within herself, but had never had the courage to cultivate: writing. Inspired by Gianluca’s photographs, she began creating fictional stories in which even those who do not know the mountains well can find something of themselves.
Her blog is about this: the power each of us has to dream with our eyes open, and above all, the possibility for anyone to find themselves in a photograph.
