Gianni Berengo Gardin, one of the most famous Italian photographers, is exhibiting at the Maxxi in Rome until September 18, 2022 with Gianni Berengo Gardin. The Eye as a Profession.
Gianni Berengo Gardin, photographer of reality
Born in Santa Margherita Ligure on October 10, 1930, he grew up and studied in Venice , which became his true hometown, where his grandparents and father were originally from.
His career as a photographer began in the early 1950s, when, thanks to a meeting with a publisher, he entered the world of photojournalism.
Within the exhibition, Berengo Gardin offers us what is known as “true photography“, meaning not digitally manipulated in any way but simply faithful to reality, without being neutral or detached, but – on the contrary – always engaged and involved.
Gianni Berengo Gardin becomes one of the most important Italian photographers of the post-war period, capable of framing in a shot the various realities that present themselves before his eyes: from humanistic portraits to architectural works – aided also by his friendship with Carlo Scarpa and Renzo Piano – to landscapes, industry, and social themes.
Throughout his career, he has held about 300 exhibitions both in Italy and abroad.
The Eye as a Profession
Gianni Berengo Gardin. The Eye as a Profession – curated by Margherita Guccione and Alessandra Maurodal – features 150 photographs.
The shots do not follow a precise chronological order but narrate the significant phases of Berengo Gardin‘s career and life.
There is, of course, Venice with its alleys, the views of the city, and the Grand Canal, up to the more recent images from 2013 related to the project on large ships. The result is a gentle and human portrait of the lagoon city.
There is a memory of the industrial world, for example, in the images that depict large companies such as Pirelli, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and especially Olivetti, a company for which the photographer worked for a long time and captured various aspects: from the headquarters and their architecture to shots that highlight the company’s great social value.
We arrive at Milan, a city synonymous with culture and social commitment. Here are the portraits of various figures of the time such as Ettore Sotsass, Lucio Fontana, Gio Ponti, Ugo Mulas, and Dario Fo.
Remaining always faithful to his desire to represent reality exactly as it was, Gianni Berengo Gardin does not miss scenes of everyday life such as some workers at work at the port of Genoa in 1988, passengers on a Rome-Milan train in 1991, or a boy playing football in Taranto.
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Also on display are the shots taken in psychiatric hospitals published back in 1968 in a book created by Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia.
These are documentary photographs about the conditions faced by psychiatric patients in Italian asylums before the approval – in 1978 – of Law 180, known as Basaglia Law, which mandated their definitive closure.
Finally, the exhibition path also includes about 250 books and catalogs created by Berengo Gardin with authors of the caliber of Gabriele Basilico, Luciano D’Alessandro, Ferdinando Scianna, Renzo Piano, or with the magazine “Il Mondo” by Mario Pannunzio, the intellectual who, as the photographer himself admitted, had a tremendous influence on him.
