We’re looking forward to introducing you to Bart Mastronardi. Check out our conversation below.
Good morning Bart , it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? Have any recent moments made you laugh or feel proud?
As a photographer the most proudest moment was releasing my most recent new photo series Beneath The Surface with actor Joey Beni. It was a deep dive into my own needs of exerting so much loss in my life for the past three. I left doing photography as I was not at all focused on creating anything. A small spark lit inside of me around September of 2024 and I began exploring the PTSD I was clearly suffering from. I wanted to explore it through underwater with fabrics of color representing the emotions I was feeling throughout.
I did a casting call for an actor who would also be able to swim, being fully nude, hold their breathe and to act underwater while working with the fabrics. Actor Joey Beni sent me in his work. He was the right choice and a blessing. It was a great collaborative photo session that day for Beneath The Surface. It took me about 3 more months to actually sit with the RAW images to begin singling out the images to edit, color grade, and then release to the public.
When I wanted to release them I saw it as a museum gallery. i called them Visual Graphia and numbered them as if they were already a full on complete series.
Each color of the fabric represented a stage I went through in my understanding of what men go through with PTSD. For myself it was certainly a dark period of anger, pain, fear, loss, grief, sorrow and finally into a brighter awakening sense of understanding I was using photography to work my way through and embrace all I was experiencing. Today I am a lot better for sure.
Joey was me in the photos. I searched for an actor and he was so much more as this was an extremely personal series to me, which I am so proud I achieved.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I focus mainly on portrait photography along with headshots for actors and business. I love working with clients on a collaborative visual need for them. I enjoy photography because it is the best medium for me to show my love to tell stories visually through light, lens, and final edit.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
The part of me that has served is purpose is the grief and trauma I carried with me when there was so much loss in my life for the past three years. I didn’t have a way to channel it as I had never experienced that much death and loss in a short amount of time. I bottled up the emotions as that is how I was taught for all these years. As a man I was told to be hush and deal with it. It is a form of repression which then turned even darker for me. I carried it around for too long and it was seeping out in isolation, depression, limited energy, a mask to wear in front of people, nightmares, all this was PTSD. It wasn’t until I was driving on a lone road in Joshua tree where I saw a chair sitting on the side of the empty road. Mind you it was over a year of no photography by this point. I just did not want to do anything creative so nothing was flowing within me. But I saw this chair and stopped my car. I felt excited for some reason to do these little photos with my iPhone in the middle of a deserted road. Something lit up inside of me that day. It took another month for me to eventually design and create the storyboards and concept for Beneath the Surface. Once I made the decision to photograph the series everything else was flowing fast. So my PTSD served it purpose but it took me a lot of work to get to the point of releasing it in the most healthiest and creative way possible – Photography. I was able to now take all the pain, trauma, grief, and turn it into an awakening of my creative spirit again. It was honestly so cathartic in every step of the creative way. The release of the images was a major breakthrough in a new and different approach to my work.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
Create. Create your health. Create your world. Create your art. Create your body. Create your mind. Create your spirit. Create to express. Create. Do. Make things. Move things. Just create. It is a most healthy way of dealing with so much inside ourselves and the world around us.
Create.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
Honestly, now at 53 years old the only belief or commitment one should make no matter how long it take is yourself. You are your only project to believe in. It sounds cheesy but at 53 year old I don’t give a F**k. You need to care for yourself. All else will fall into place. Let the loudness of the world fade to silence. Go deep into your self and be brutally honest with who you are and where you are to where you are going. It is the only way to know that you are the only one committed to cultivating who you are, what you believe in. Once I learned this, really from the core of my soul, did it all begin to get better for me. I am committed to health in every possible way now. I still have my issues but the commitment to bettering myself as my own project, cultivating a healthy life. It is not easy as it take so much work to prioritize your life over so much noise in the world.
Commit yourself as you are the project. Without you there is nothing. With you there are endless possibilities to create in your life.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. When do you feel most at peace?
I feel most at peace when I surrender to knowing my life is an experience with limited time. I can only do so much in a day.
I do what I can each day to be at peace with living the life I have. Everyone’s life is different from one another. I choose so much more differently knowing peace comes from the choices I make to be better. I can say this now. I could not say this two years ago. It has taken much struggle, discovery, exploration and a deep dive into the darkness I was experiencing inside my own tempest. I awakened myself, not healed, but reignited a light in me. I let many things go, death also took so much, and others simply left my journey. This all reads existential and perhaps so, but you do not come to peace until you have weathered through powerful storm. I am at peace knowing this is my jounry in this life. Who I am and where I am going is important to me. It has taken time, fear, and the courage to push through, create, help, give, love, and to listen to the silence inside of myself instead of the noise around me. There are many people who have gone through far worse historic matters in their lives and I learn from them knowing I too can weather this now more than before.
The greater work I do for myself the greater the peace is in me as I grow into my whole self. It isn’t about sunsets, rainbows, or fake spiritual gurus it is about doing the hard work inside yourself, the uncomfortable conversations, cultivating your life to grow better and healthier.
I only speak for myself, but I hope everyone can feel the peace in themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.BartMastronardiPhotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bartmastronardiphotography
- Facebook: Bart Mastronardi Photography
Image Credits
Beneath the Surface
A photo series by Bart Mastronardi Photography
Actor Joey Beni
2024 copy rite
