Francesco Aglieri Rinella (Italian, b. 1993) is a photographer who slows down his process to study light and read a scene before shooting, and works in medium format film.,Influenced by the New Topographics movement and its documentation of the man-altered landscape, he has spent recent years photographing the decline and endurance of small-town America across the West, Southwest, and Midwest.,,
He began photographing as a teenager, filming daily life on camcorders before buying his first digital camera in 2017. He started out photographing cars at motorsport rallies, then moved into portrait and nude work. A 2019 trip to Japan turned his focus toward documenting ordinary, everyday moments. During Italy's pandemic lockdowns he deepened his commitment to analog and medium format film, using it to treat ordinary scenes as, in his words, “real works of art”. His greatest influence is Stephen Shore, whom he credits with taking photography to a new level in the 1970s by using color for the first time and departing from the standards of the day. He calls Shore's book Uncommon Places his “absolute bible”.
In 2022 he undertook West Safari, a 15,363-kilometer road trip through the American West and Southwest made across two expeditions, one through California in May 2022 and another across six southwestern states that November.Inspired by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the project documents decaying, abandoned corners of the American West through imagery shaped by the New Topographics tradition of the man-altered landscape.,Dreaming Neon Lights, from that series, documents a defunct era that is “abandoned even if known and acclaimed in modern culture”.West Safari won the exhibition prize at the 2023 Urban Photo Awards and was shown at the Poreč Museum in Croatia that August. The portfolio was also reviewed by Steve McCurry as part of a Magnum Photos and Squarespace photography critique series.
He later spent 28 days photographing Galaxies Beneath a Dying Sky, a road trip across the American Midwest built around portraits of local residents and images of abandoned and repopulated small-town structures.,The project treats these structures not as symbols of decline but as repositories of memory, with a poem by Diane Scrofani threaded through the images to echo the project's astronomical title.The series was shortlisted for the 2025 Booooooom Art & Photo Book Award.His disciplined approach to the material has been linked to a background in the military.
