Field Photography The Second Sketchbook: A visual diary of an artist chasing his Impossible Pledge

For more than thirty years, Pisani has carried a camera to every place he has visited, documenting the foreign worlds he explored. The camera became his Second Sketchbook, a way to catch and savor the moments before they disappeared. The images gathered here span 73 countries and counting.

The following photographs, drawn from that Second Sketchbook, are a selection of his visual diary. They function as a parallel record to his paintings, the raw sensory archive from which the work is later translated into canvas. Some capture moments of friction or excitement, while others are subtle juxtapositions of color or circumstance he noticed while others walked by, moments caught before they vanished. Many also capture people he met along the way who became part of the journey, etching themselves into his permanent ledger. Any or all of these glimpses, encounters, and quiet revelations ripple forward, potentially later emerging in his Existential Landscapes.
Click any image to view the full size and a hint of the backstory behind it.