Nicola Bertellotti was born in Pietrasanta in 1976.
After studying History at the University of Pisa he begins to travel the world trying to rediscover the past glory of forgotten places. What emerges in his aesthetics is the nostalgia for paradise lost, expressed in the love for ruins, and the photographic re-proposal of decadent poetics. The obsolete objects and dilapidated rooms present in his work have the same function that the madeleine has in Proust, that of evoking the memory of a happy age. Self-taught, he takes his images in natural light using a medium format digital camera. Since 2013 he has exhibited in numerous contemporary art galleries and museums, in Italy and abroad.
In 2014 he published the book "Phenomenologia della fine" (Petrartedizioni) and was invited to the Textile Museum of Busto Arsizio to inaugurate the European Photography Festival with "Damnatio Memoriae", a series of views that investigate the romantic concept of the sublime.
In 2016, inspired by the French landscape architect Gilles Clément, he created a new project on the undecided spaces that are found on the margins, outside the maps of his country, which will culminate in the solo show "Hic Sunt Dracones" in Castel dell'Ovo in Naples. In the same year the Limen Museum of Contemporary Art in Vibo Valentia enriched the collection with "Blue Eye", one of his works.
In 2019 the Pärnu Museum in Estonia dedicated the exhibition "The Great Beauty" to him, the photographer's homage to the great abandoned Italian beauty.
In 2020 he won the Prospettiva Riuso photography contest.
In 2021 he exhibits for the first time in the United States, the Estella Gallery in New Orleans hosts a selection of shots from his latest Grand Tour in search of modern ruins: "Paradiso Perduto – The beauty of imperfection". In the summer he is on the official program of the Brescia Photo Festival with "Sipario", a project on the abandonment of places of culture.
In 2022 he won the Trento Art Prize and the Gold Plate for photography at the prestigious Premio Arte. He publishes his second book "In Absentia" (Snap Collective Publishing)
In 2023 he won the first prize of the AIPAI Photo Contest with a series dedicated to industrial archeology and was a guest at the Camogli Communication Festival with the conference "The dust of the world".
In 2024 he returns to exhibit in his city, Pietrasanta, with "Ora che è capovolta la clessidra".
Among the group exhibitions he participated in: "Draumur", Zenzero Art Gallery in Lugano in 2016; "Requiem", Mirabilia Art Gallery in Rome in 2019; "Remember Rekorda", Contemporary Cluster in Rome in 2020; "Untranslated", Sensi Arte Gallery in Siena in 2023; "Inventarium", Reial Cercle Artístic in Barcelona in 2023; "This is not the end", Residence of the Italian Embassy in Bern in 2023.
His works are present in various public and private collections and have appeared in various magazines, including: Esquire, Arte, Artedossier, Elle Decor, Lampoon, Bild, Daily Mail, Milieu Magazine, Nuvo, D-Repubblica.
