Gianni Berengo Gardin is one of the most famous Italian photographers.
More than half a century he spent with camera in hand, capturing the fleeting allure of urban landscapes of Rome and Venice. In his black-and-white photographs – life, changeable and fickle. Photographer longingly reminisces about the past, nostalgic for the days when his favorite cities were not yet crowded with tourists, and in them it was possible to find quiet little places to escape from the hustle and bustle.
To date, Gardin has published more than 250 books and still continues to work. With camera at the ready, he travels to favorite places to find new subjects for his photographic stories. Speaking of modern times, Curtains have always stressed that it was difficult to find the romance inherent in the Venetian streets half a century ago. “Won’t see the girl who runs through the deserted St. Mark’s square, scaring away pigeons, or a couple who kiss the tall columns, all alone. You can never do such images. Venice has completely changed compared to what it was. Now it is full of tourists,” – said the 85-year-old artist.
Gardin was born in Genoa in 1930. In Venice he moved after the war, and photography for a long time was for him only a hobby. One day his uncle gave him an illustrated edition of the American photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and then Gianni realized the unlimited possibilities of the camera.
Gardin is known for its diverse imagery: that it relieves the patients of the psychiatric hospital here on his picture of the youth, dancing on the beach to the sound of the gramophone, that employees of the Olivetti factory. “People travel around the world to photograph places such as Hawaii. After they understand, what a beauty here,” says the photographer. This summer, the Curtains will present another exhibition, entitled “Real photograph” (‘True Photography’).
Gianni Gardin against any distortion of the image, it compares the pictures processed in Photoshop, with a special kind of fraud. He calls himself a real photographer and an apologist for a dying art. Total age of smartphones, it remains faithful to the traditional camera and time-tested methods of shooting.
