Born in Sardinia and rooted in Finland, Carlo Spano — known artistically as Karlo (and no, don’t ask why the “K”; some things are better left unexplained) — began his photographic journey alongside the struggles of real life: relationships falling apart, searching for meaning, and trying to understand a world that often refused to reciprocate.
Photography became his way of articulating what words could not hold.
If you want to dive into that part of the story, his first book RAW is a visual testimony of becoming — a narrative of growth, pain, and transformation framed through the lens of light and shadow.

His visual world is shaped by painters who understood solitude long before he did: Edward Hopper, whose alienated interiors sparked something in him; Caravaggio, whose chiaroscuro turned suffering into illumination; and the psychological works of Carl Jung, who taught him that what we refuse to face will eventually shape us.

Photographically, his work is shaped by the cinematic urban storytelling of Nicolas Miller and the painterly color poetry of Saul Leiter, both of whom helped define his eye for mood, mystery, and emotional silence. Leiter’s influence reached even deeper through Forever Saul — a book whose intimate quotes and haunting final negatives struck something raw within Karlo. That moment became a quiet spark, inspiring him to craft RAW, a hybrid exploration where photography and personal life fold into one another in search of truth.

His philosophical backbone comes from the existentialists — Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and others who believed that personal meaning is carved out of darkness, not granted by the world. Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra became a companion text during long Nordic winter nights since he was 17, influencing not just Karlo’s worldview but the way he approaches resilience: not as a slogan, but as the quiet, painful, necessary act of becoming oneself.

The turning point came through Hopper’s Nighthawks and Room in New York.
Finland — a country known for its personal space, loneliness, depression, harsh weather, and the quiet ache people carry — suddenly resembled Hopper’s painted worlds. The alienation, the distance between people, the unspoken inner lives… they were all there in the everyday Finnish reality:
the silence of public transport,
the loneliness of relationships where people struggle to name their needs,
the emotional winter inside and outside the body.

Staring at Hopper´s work, Karlo decided to translate that same sense of human distance into the photographic language of Finnish nights.
Enabled by Nietzsche’s call to self-overcome and Jung’s exploration of the shadow, he began capturing the moments in-between — the pauses, the silences, the tensions, the stories people don’t verbalize.
Steamed windows, solitary commuters, strangers lost in their own thoughts, and the cold glow of a streetlight cutting through winter darkness.

What began as a coping mechanism for loneliness evolved into a visual language of identity, belonging, and the invisible burdens people carry. His images blend cinematic tones with emotional storytelling, offering glimpses into fragility, resilience, and the private worlds people inhabit when no one is watching.

Psychology is the other pillar of his work.
Becoming a psychotherapist is his life-long purpose — one he is still fighting for, one financial obstacle at a time. And until he reaches that path fully, he uses his photography, his writing, and his books as tools for introspection: art as a mirror, art as confrontation, art as empowerment.

His work is ultimately an invitation:
to look inward,
to explore one’s own shadows,
to grow, slowly and painfully, into something whole.

Piece by piece, frame by frame, Karlo tries to give back to the world in the only way he can — by offering honesty, atmosphere, and depth to a society that often rushes past its own emotional truths.