Art. #04 – Dario Sequi: Sardinia Beyond the Postcard
Interview by Andrea Atzeri
Some people take a picture with their mind and heart first, and only then with the camera. Dario Sequi is one of them.
For Appunti di Famiglia, Dario is our photographer and partner – the person we trust with the most delicate part of storytelling: turning a place into a memory without flattening it into a cliché.
As we talk, one thing becomes clear: his path isn’t “linear.” It’s an education in seeing. Built on curiosity, patience, and a life choice he never negotiated: staying in Sardinia and building his work here, with roots in the island and eyes open to the world.
From family films to video: learning to keep time
Before becoming a photographer, Dario was a videomaker. And before that, he was a teenager fascinated by the backstage of television: cameras, lights, mixers, tripods – the whole machinery of visual storytelling.
But the real origin is more personal: family films projected on a wall.
As a child, he would rewatch them and get lost in the details.
Not just out of nostalgia, but because he discovered something essential: images can hold time.
They can keep moments alive.
After military service, he goes all-in as a self-taught creative.
With his savings, he buys his first video camera and records everything – landscapes, people, daily life – storing tapes while dreaming of a proper editing setup.
He learns by doing, by assisting, by carrying equipment, by following experienced journalists and documentarians… and above all by watching closely.
The turning point comes when someone asks him to create something “his way.” With real commission work. From there, he starts producing documentaries and video sequences across Sardinia – what we might call stock footage today, but back then it was simply his way of saying: This is what I see. This is how it feels.
When photography became part of the job (almost by accident)
Photography comes later, naturally, as an extension of video. Dario buys a camera and starts shooting. But he keeps those images to himself – photography is “for him,” a personal space.
Until a creative director he often collaborates with needs landscape and tradition photos for a magazine. Dario casually mentions he might have some. The director insists on seeing them.
That’s the moment photography officially enters his professional world.
What strikes me here is this: photography wasn’t a strategy for him. It was a personal need. And when passion starts there, you can feel it in the work.
Staying in Sardinia: a life decision before a career move
Dario’s love for Sardinia is both simple and radical: he didn’t want to leave.
He had opportunities elsewhere, even abroad – but they required relocating.
He refused.
His reasoning is powerful in its simplicity: planes and ships were invented to leave, yes… but also to come back.
There’s no need to disappear forever.
Still, if you choose to stay, you need to build opportunities where you are.
Dario did exactly that:
he moved deeper into tourism imagery, refined his craft, and shaped a style that speaks to high-end hospitality without losing the island’s soul.
Forte Village: home, school, and a relentless standard
His long collaboration with Forte Village begins almost by chance: at the BIT travel fair in Milan, a general manager sees a video Dario made for another property. He asks who created it. And he reaches out.
From there, everything changes.
Dario describes Forte Village with one word that says it all: home.
Home professionally and personally. And a school, too.
To tell a place like that, he explains, you must understand its philosophy and never lose focus.
The resort evolves constantly — services, spaces, rooms, experiences — so returning guests can feel every stay as if it were the first. That means constant innovation, and constant attention from the storyteller behind the lens.
Dario has photographed Michelin-starred chefs, luxury events, sports legends, dream suites and villas, shows and concerts.
Yet when I ask what moved him most, he doesn’t talk about glamour.
He talks about people.
The staff.
The “historic” figures — those who shaped the resort’s mood long before any official image did.
Their gestures, fatigue, pride, loyalty, respect.
That, for him, is the most valuable portfolio: the human one.
Beyond the postcard: a destination is a relationship
This is where Dario’s vision aligns deeply with what we want Appunti di Famiglia to be.
For him, travel photography is not an exercise in aesthetics. It’s not (only) technical perfection. It’s relationship.
Sardinia taught him that landscapes alone aren’t enough: behind crystal waters there are working hands, time-worn faces, centuries of silence — and the loud joy of village festivals.
His method keeps two distances alive:
- Wide shots, to breathe: context, geometry, the relationship between people and land.
- Close shots, almost like listening: faces, ancient gestures, costume details, traces left by celebrations on stone streets.
And one rule is non-negotiable: the image must contain emotion — his emotion first.
That’s why he never arrives with the idea of “getting the shot and leaving.” He stops. Observes. Listens. Often he talks with people before lifting the camera, learning why a ritual exists and what it means to those who live it.
Only then does he feel he isn’t stealing an image — he’s preserving a real fragment of life.
His strongest advice: research before you shoot
When I ask for advice to anyone who wants to photograph a place, Dario is careful: each person must find their own visual voice. And he sees technological progress as an opportunity, not a threat.
But he insists on one universal principle: before you press the shutter, research.
Understand who is in front of you. Why you are there. Who you are working for.
Otherwise, you risk making a beautiful image — and an empty one.
This lesson goes beyond photography. It’s about tourism, communication, and the way we choose to tell our land. If you know your “why,” you’ll find your “how.”
Two lives, one thread: commissioned work and personal work
Dario describes his career as two parallel lives: personal and commercial.
The personal one is private, guarded.
Much of his archive remains unseen — a place he returns to when he can, to relive moments and nurture his creative vision.
The commercial one is commissioned work.
And he’s honest about it: he shoots for clients so he can keep shooting for himself.
One funds and feeds the other.
Even that is part of his life choice: staying in Sardinia, where opportunities can be fewer than elsewhere.
And yet he never regretted it.
His greatest project — the one that never ends — remains the same:
telling Sardinia in all its facets.
Always in progress.
“The girl among the colors”: when an image becomes destiny
My last question: if you had to tell Sardinia with just one photograph, which would it be?
Dario smiles. Because, he says, a “definitive” image doesn’t exist. Sardinia can’t be reduced to one frame if you want to stay faithful to reality.
Instead, it’s made of fragments — many — that together become a story.
Still, he shares an anecdote that feels like a short film.
An April day, the Tramontana (a strong northerly wind) clearing the air until the horizon feels almost touchable. The next day, the light is sharp and vibrant. Dario drives toward the south-west coast, near Teulada. Passing by Tuerredda, he notices something: a landscape he photographed many times looks different that day.
He shoots. Then archives the photo in his personal collection — the one he rarely shows.
Three years later, a request arrives: an exclusive, unpublished photo that clearly represents Sardinia, for international promotion.
Dario knows immediately which image to send: “The girl among the colors.” A solitary figure walking inside a palette of Sardinian blues and greens — turquoise and emerald water, spring vegetation in greens and yellows, a bright sky, a ribbon of white sand.
That image later becomes the official visual of Sardinia for the Milan Expo.And in that story there is his entire philosophy: be present at the right moment, don’t postpone, recognize what can’t be repeated.
Some images can’t be recreated. And when you understand that, photography becomes more than a job — it becomes a responsibility.
Closing note
Working with Dario means choosing someone who doesn’t chase “pretty pictures,” but pictures that stay.
Pictures that tell the truth. That respect people. That keep speaking even years later.
And that’s exactly what we want Appunti di Famiglia to do: collect real fragments and place them in sequence until they become shared memory.
Andrea Atzeri