Samantha Casolari is an Italian photographer based in Brooklyn.

MOSSLESS: What was the first moment in your life when you realised that you love photography? 
SAMANTHA CASOLARI: The first time I realized I loved photography was when I came to live in the States at 20 years old on an exchange program scholarship. I went to Madison, WI for a year, and it was quite a big cultural shock for me as I felt so far away from Italy and Europe. I don’t think I have ever felt so lonely in all my life. So I would spend hours in their amazing library going through any kind of books. And there I have discovered my first photography books, which blew my mind away. They did it in a very strange way, it was a pretty unconscious response I had, as at that time I did not realize what it really meant to me. i just could not stop looking at those images and feeling the way i was feeling looking at them, it was a little bit the feeling you have when you like someone. And I went through so many of them. Then I bought my reflex - which I still use now - in NY and a year later I moved to Paris and there I start shooting almost everyday, as my first love was street photography, and there was plenty to be shot in those streets. My second was war photography, as that it’s what I studied in school war and conflict, and I managed to get an internship at Magnum were there was plenty of wars photographers to be looked at. I have learned so much that year in Paris.

ML: It feels like you’ve been working your ass off in the last year. How are you getting all these jobs? 
SC: By showing my portfolio and website around. And shooting a lot of personal work. I think that is the essential, shooting personal work. That is how I start getting assignments too. Had I sat around with few random nice photos on my website and a big photography label on it, I don’t think I would have started working the way I did. I have been pretty insistent from that point of view, shooting my stories all the time. Because I was interested in telling them, this is why I shoot. Only lately I haven’t been able to do one in a while because I have been working so much, but I just can’t wait to to go back to it soon.

ML: Tell me something about the first few times you were published in a magazine. How did it all happen? 
SC: I started shooting professionally only 4 and a half years ago. I had to learn from scratch, I had no idea how anything worked as I was coming from a completely different background. So I  just started by shooting my own stories. I shot a story on young people on probation from Sing Sing meeting them the day they would come out of prison. Once it was done I showed it to the co-director of Vanity Fair in Italy they decided to buy it. And the first stories I published worked pretty much the same way. I would shoot them and then show them to editors, and if they thought they were interesting they would publish them. 

ML: Could you explain how you work with filters to make these images?
SC: I don’t use filters or photoshop, as I would not know how to use either of them. Let’s just say I play around with my lenses a lot, and that if I explained too much it would take the magic away…!

ML: Coffee or tea?
SC: Definitely coffee and then tea.