MUFOCO EDUCATIONAL
ABSTRACT
PHOTOGRAPHY
PIERRE CORDIER
These dreamy images spark the imagine, projecting us towards unknown galaxies, immersing us in the ocean’s deepest abysses.The refined and varied colors and layers have the appearance of marble veining. The focus of Pierre Cordier’s work is the ‘chemogram’, a technique he developed in 1956, images obtained without a camera but rather through the direct action of chemicals on the emulsion paper. The lack of reproducibility makes each chemogram a unique object.
OLIVO BARBIERI
The experimentations of Olivo Barbieri invariably tend towards off-camera photography, creating forms that seem like fireworks or lunar landscapes. This is an imaginative series of early chemograms from the negative inspired by certain writings by Claude Pélieu of a surrealist nature that become important for the images by providing narrative support.
FRANCO FONTANA
Whether it’s an abstract painting or a photographic image of the hills of Basilicata, the fields of color, geometric, flattened and extrapolated from reality help us to simplify the complexity of the natural landscape in order to create abstract visions at their most minimal. The photographs of Franco Fontana transport us to surreal worlds in which color is the protagonist and the play of lines is cadenced in a sort of chromatic grammar that renders everything more suggestive.
JEAN LOUIS GARNELL
The large-format image by Louis Garnell presents an imposing field of gray surrounded by an explosion of colored fragments deposited along the edges. We no longer have any reference to reality, the forms exist within a digital assembly with no regard for the everyday world. In the series Modules, Images, Jean Louis Garnell entrusts the task o fragmentation and subsequent arbitrary recomposition of images not shot by him to a computer, resulting in an average gray, the sum of all the colors of the world.
MARIO GIACOMELLI
The extreme nature of the aerial view provides a unique interpretation of the landscape, insofar as the distance makes it possible to better understand the terrain, which, for those who know how to read it, tells the stories of the people who have lived there. A hill in the Marche region, lined by the furrows of plows working the fields, recalls the strong typographical flavor that we find in the works of Mario Giacomelli. The agricultural landscape becomes two-dimensional, and the lines become traces of man’s perennial effort to plow it, and of the soils submission to the wounds, which evoke the deep creases of the farmer's hands.
PAOLO GIOLI
Using a pinhole camera, Paolo Gioli inserts small objects of different materials between himself and the subject being photographed, which he has been doing since the 1960s to create portraits and self-portraits on Polaroid film. His photos are thus double, simultaneously capturing the face of the subject and the abstract forms that interfere with it to the point of erasing it. In his work there are always significant overlappings of lines and abstract elements in dialogue/conflict with the subject.
FRANCO GRIGNANI
The eye explores the question of vision, put to the test by the abstract experimentations of Franco Grignani. Graphic elements create optical patterns that play on the refined elegance of the forms. Grignani pursues a different and original direction, geared towards deepening the processes of perception – by both the human eye and the camera – and optical phenomena like split vision and distortion.
ROBERTO MASOTTI
In certain of Roberto Masotti’s photos of nature there is a subtle, elegant connection to Land Art. Rock emerges from the black of the background, accentuated by layers of paint applied directly to the photo paper, providing an image of a strange and unsettling dream-like dimension.
NINO MIGLIORI
Nino Migliori’s experiments on photographic paper – chemograms, hydrograms, pyrogram, oxidations, cliché-verres – open up surreal worlds, spatial and graphic, caused by acid reactions, burning, cutting and scraping. The abstract photography of the ‘50s and ‘60s commingles with the abstractions of the Neo avant-garde, exploring all the expressive possibilities of the medium. The surface of the photographic paper turns into a kind of canvas on which forms, constellations, lumps and marks both simple and complex are inscribed by light, 'happening' freely and opening themselves to multiple interpretive possibilities.
PAOLO MONTI
The abstract experimentation in the photographs of Paolo Monti arises from the direct observation of nature. The results presented here were obtained through different techniques: from the rotation of the camera to the macrophotography of rocks, lichens, wood, leaves and walls. Thanks to the camera, they visual acuity of the eye is enhanced, penetrating matter until losing all reference to reality, eliciting associations with Abstract Expressionist painting.
AARON SISKIND
The framing selects portions of decontextualized, two-dimensional reality. There is no perspective, the third dimension is eliminated. The vision is caused by pictorial signs left on urban surfaces. In the photography of Aaron Siskind there is no descriptive intention, but rather the need to transform into self-sufficient abstract compositions the mundane, unexceptional things of everyday life, with no particular meaning, the signs found on the walls, streets and railings of New York.
LUIGI VERONESI
Fotogrammi
Light is to photography as paint is to painting. The photograms of Luigi Veronesi are abstract compositions, luminous images obtained without the use of a camera. His experimentation began in the darkroom with negatives or photo paper, upon which the objects exposed to light generate games of shadows and unexpected transparencies. What strikes us about his images are the intensity of the colors and the beauty of the forms and geometrical compositions.
SILVIO WOLF
The large-format diptych by Silvio Wolf attracts not only the eye but the body, enveloped in warm, intense colors, such that the work ends up directly engaging the emotional sphere as well. The content of the image eludes us, leading our imagination towards memories of sunsets and blazing fires. The association with the work of Mark Rothko is immediate. As Wolf himself explains, he recovers “the initial excerpts of the photographic film, exposed randomly to light while loading the camera and then irregularly developed during the photochemical process”, provoking reflection on the material of photographic film at the boundary between analogue and digital.
MUFOCO EDUCATIONAL
OMAGGIO A
GABRIELE
BASILICO
Glasgow, 1969
Uno dei primi lavori di Gabriele Basilico, ancora giovane studente di architettura, è stato Processo di trasformazione di una città, frutto di un unico rullino, pochi fotogrammi che raccontano un quartiere di Glasgow, in Scozia, che stava per essere demolito. Fu quel viaggio a segnare l’inizio della sua carriera di fotografo: Basilico cammina per le strade della periferia scozzese incontrando bambini e ragazzi, condivide con loro un dialogo, un gioco, un sorriso, la messa in posa prima dello scatto. La strada diventa il fil rouge, sono fotografie che dimostrano un’attenzione all’aspetto sociale, all’attimo e al movimento, con stile molto diverso da quello che lo farà conoscere in tutto il mondo come uno dei massimi interpreti della fotografia di architettura. Quando Basilico tornò a Milano mostrò il lavoro a Lanfranco Colombo, che gli dedicò immediatamente una mostra alla sua galleria milanese Il Diaframma. Fu la sua prima mostra.
Milano. Quarto Oggiaro, 1970-1973
Questa fotografia è scattata da Gabriele Basilico all’inizio della carriera, in quello che era allora uno dei più difficili quartieri popolari di Milano, caratterizzato da un’esplosione edilizia e da grandi tensioni sociali. Realizzata con un linguaggio ancora fortemente legato alla tradizione del reportage, testimonia una forte tensione sociale e un interesse per la forma urbana che nel corso degli anni successivi avrebbero trovato forma più compiuta nei grandi progetti documentari, espressione di un personale metodo di lettura delle città e del paesaggio, nel suo cambiamento dall’era industriale a quella post-industriale.
Milano, 1970-1973
Una Milano insolita, lontana dall’idea di metropoli e dalla frenetica vita della città, una Milano silenziosa, vuota. Realizzata agli esordi della carriera, in un periodo di formazione in cui sono ancora molto forti le influenze del linguaggio prevalente del momento, il reportage, questa
fotografia presenta già alcuni elementi che caratterizzeranno le ricerche più mature dell’autore, come l’interesse per lo spazio urbano e per i volumi degli edifici. In questo caso è lo spigolo del muro a strutturare l’immagine con decisione, dividendola in due metà, mentre nel centro la freccia di un cartello stradale punta verso l’alto in un punto non definito del cielo, lasciando aperte infinite possibilità di visione.
In pieno sole, 1978
La pelle del nostro corpo è sensibile alla luce e reagisce scurendosi alla sua esposizione con un processo analogo a quello della fotografia. Così, se una stoffa copre una porzione di corpo, la parte scoperta rimarrà impressionata, proprio come avviene alla carta emulsionata. Gabriele Basilico, noto fotografo di architettura e paesaggio, negli anni Settanta affronta questo insolito tema con ironia e senso del grottesco: il corpo, abbronzato e unto da creme solari, diventa oggetto plastico e foto-sensibile.
Contact, 1978
A metà degli anni Settanta, partecipe di una riflessione su industria e design, Gabriele Basilico utilizza la fotografia per affrontare il tema del rapporto tra oggetto e corpo, focalizzando la sua attenzione sull’idea di ‘traccia’ come segno di contatto, dal punto di vista figurativo e simbolico. Queste immagini dal tono ironico, in contrasto con la rigorosa strutturazione del punto di vista zenitale, mostrano attraverso una serie di dittici le impronte precise, ben visibili, lasciate dalle texture di varie sedute sui corpi con cui entrano in contatto, come un tatuaggio provvisorio, un bassorilievo, un calco. Le inquadrature dall’alto, strette sugli oggetti d’indagine, evidenziano la relazione che intercorre tra sedute e sederi.
Dancing in Emilia, 1978
Dopo una prima ‘ricognizione’ lungo la via Emilia alla scoperta delle architetture dei moderni dancing che stavano sostituendo le ormai invecchiate balere, Gabriele Basilico torna ripetutamente nei luoghi dedicati al ballo per raccogliere ritratti e scene in cui sono protagoniste le persone, piuttosto che gli edifici: coppie, giovani, gruppi, dj, ballerine e presentatori sono sorpresi dalla luce chiara del flash, che illumina la scena lasciando poco spazio a ciò che sta intorno. Caratterizzate da un linguaggio leggero, ironico e affettuoso, le fotografie di Basilico compongono lo spettacolo di un fenomeno antropologico fiorente, che trova esito nella prima pubblicazione dell’autore, Dancing in Emilia, del 1981.
Milano.
Ritratti di fabbriche, 1978-1980
É una giornata tersa del weekend di Pasqua del 1978 quando Gabriele Basilico inizia il celebre progetto Ritratti di fabbriche, “un catalogo di immagini della periferia milanese che presenta una ricomposizione visiva di un paesaggio urbano poco noto”, come lui stesso afferma. Con un approccio sistematico di catalogazione, influenzato dalla ricerca sull’archeologia industriale dei coniugi Becher, carta topografica alla mano, il fotografo si dedica ad una mappatura delle fabbriche della città, proprio nel momento in cui Milano vive un processo di de-industrializzazione. La luce, elemento fondamentale della ricerca, genera ombre profonde che definiscono gli edifici permettendo alle architetture di manifestarsi nella loro concretezza ed essenza; la fabbrica si dematerializza per trasformarsi in un disegno di linee e forme, contrasti di bianco e nero mediati da uno sguardo lento, riflessivo, puro e geometrico che, da qui in poi, caratterizzerà lo stile inconfondibile di Gabriele Basilico.
Boulogne-sur-mer, 1985
Nel 1984 il governo francese avvia un importante progetto di documentazione sulle trasformazioni del territorio, la Mission Photographique de la DATAR: Gabriele Basilico viene invitato a partecipare come unico italiano insieme ad altri 27 fotografi provenienti da tutto il mondo. E’ per lui il primo grande riconoscimento internazionale. Lavora sulla costa nord-occidentale della Francia, osservando con sguardo nuovo, lento, gli ampi paesaggi fatti di cielo, vento, nubi e mare, scoprendo il fascino delle grandi vedute. Così afferma: “L’incarico (...) ha determinato un mio nuovo atteggiamento contemplativo verso il paesaggio, come a voler cogliere nell’immagine tutti i particolari, fino alla complessità delle cose che, a una minuziosa osservazione, il paesaggio poteva restituire.” Le fotografie realizzate per questa committenza sono poi sfociate nella pubblicazione di Bord de Mer (1990).
Beirut, 1991
Nel 1991 Gabriele Basilico viene coinvolto, insieme ad altri 5 maestri della fotografia internazionale, in un progetto di documentazione fotografica dell’area centrale della città di Beirut, capitale libanese devastata da una guerra, appena terminata. L’obiettivo era di riuscire a raccontare lo ‘stato delle cose’ di quel momento, perché le immagini potessero contribuire a costruire la memoria storica della città. Il fotografo afferma: “La città sembrava affetta da una malattia della pelle, spaventosa, che stava a sottolineare l’assurdità di qualsiasi guerra. Non mi sono fermato a questa impressione, ma ho cercato di immaginare la città nella sua forma originaria, pronta a riprendere la vita interrotta.” Basilico inizia così un’esplorazione sistematica dello spazio, restituendo una visione strutturale della città, capace di suggerire una condizione architettonica di normalità pur nell’assurda devastazione causata dalla guerra.
Sesto San Giovanni, 1992
Per Gabriele Basilico le città sono il frutto dell’opera dell’uomo, il risultato delle trasformazioni sociali ed economiche dell’epoca industriale e post-industriale. Il suo lavoro sulle aree urbane, sulle trasformazioni del paesaggio contemporaneo, si inserisce con coerenza nell’ambito del progetto di committenza Archivio dello Spazio, un’articolata documentazione del territorio della provincia di Milano realizzata da 58 fotografi italiani tra il 1987 e il 1997. Nelle aree occupate dalle ex-acciaierie Falck di Sesto San Giovanni, Basilico fotografa gli edifici fino a poco tempo prima centro della produzione dell'impresa. In quest’immagine, la strada, la cisterna e la torre dell’acqua si inseriscono come sculture nel paesaggio, definite da uno squarcio di luce, con un immediato richiamo ai soggetti dei paesaggi industriali dei coniugi tedeschi Bernd e Hilla Becher.
Milano, 1998
Gli edifici a torre nei pressi del quartiere Lorenteggio si stagliano netti e imponenti sullo sfondo dell’immagine, una scacchiera di grigi ne definisce la loro imponenza, i volumi architettonici sono chiari e aiutano a delineare la profondità dei piani. Gabriele Basilico torna a misurarsi con la sua città in occasione di Milano senza confini, una committenza promossa dalla Provincia di Milano nel 1998-1999 e affidata a 10 artisti italiani ed europei, intesa come ideale completamento delle campagne fotografiche di Archivio dello Spazio. Il suo lavoro su Milano inizia con rigore di osservazione, contemplazione, con una ricerca sulla distanza, sulla misurazione continua per trovare un equilibrio tra ‘un qui e un là’, quasi a riordinare lo spazio cercando un senso di identità del luogo. I temi del paesaggio antropizzato, della stratificazione urbana, della marginalità, delle periferie e delle aree in ridefinizione sono per il fotografo una continua ricerca per raccontare una nuova identità della città in continua e veloce trasformazione.
MUFOCO EDUCATIONAL
IERI OGGI
MILANO
TINO PETRELLI
Milano, 26 Aprile 1945
Ragazze aggregate a gruppi di partigiani in Via Brera
Often in the photo reportage of Tino Petrelli there a two coexisting stories, one tied to the historical circumstances and the other to the people represented therein. It’s April 26th 1945, the day after the liberation of the city from the Nazis, and the resistance fighters have taken to the streets. In the foreground, three women walk purposefully carrying rifles, eyes forward. There is no violence, but rather determination, dressed in skirts and blouses, that conveys an image of female pride. The men follow a few steps behind.
FEDERICO PATELLANI
Milano, 1945
Witness to the reconstruction immediately after the war, Federico Patellani recounts with a delicate eye the story of a man and woman walking arm in arm along a street on the outskirts of Milan, like a scene from a Neorealist film. In a return to normality, they walk toward us as we watch them, leaving behind their joined shadows which point to a lone man proceeding in the opposite direction. The couple are immersed in conversation, or perhaps simply in love, in the manner of days gone by.
PAOLO MONTI
Muro a Milano, 1954
In the 1950s, Milan still carried the scars of a war just recently concluded. Paolo Monti, with a tireless eye for the observation of the material sphere, chooses a tight crop to create a two-dimensional image that leaves little room for understanding the surrounding context. What we see are a wall and a damaged, peeling door, ruins symbolizing the wounds suffered by the city, like the skin of a violated body. The viewer cannot but continuously scrutinize every detail in order to decipher the indecipherable.
GIANNI BERENGO GARDIN
Casa di ringhiera, anni 70
These images by Gianni Berengo Gardin reveal his great ability to capture everyday life from up close. In this case, we feel we are present as he shows us tenements with communal balconies, a collective existence that unfolds on the balconies and between floors. The richness of simplicity can be seen inside and outside the homes, in the men and women of every age, in the railings over which the day’s laundry intermingles with art, in the paintings propped on shelves and the songs improvised as if on a stage. There are only two visible floors, but we can imagine them infinitely continuing above and below, creating unpredictable visual games.
MARIO CATTANEO
Luna Park, 1955-1965
he ‘60s were the years of a newfound serenity in Italy, of which Mario Cattaneo is the poetic and sincere narrator. This image taken at Luna Park is a complex play of intersecting lines, drawings, words, materials and forms in which the eye moves in spirally around until finding repose in the gaze of the boy standing in the center of the scene, who is not looking at the seated girl but at another girl, of whom we can only see her feet at the left edge, thereby taking us out of the frame and opening up our imagination.
ULIANO LUCAS
Piazza Duca D’Aosta, Milano 1968
In the work of Uliano Lucas, reportage combines with social commitment. The low point of view creates a powerful image, an icon of the great emigration from the southern Italy to Milan. The deep symbolic meaning of this photograph is generated by the relationship between the foreground subject, immobile and disoriented, carrying a suitcase and a cardboard box held together by string, and the massive Pirelli skyscraper that looms over him like a giant weight on his shoulders. A metaphor of labor and power, in which man is the gear that enables the great machine to move.
ENZO NOCERA
Pirelli, stabilimento Bicocca
Laboratorio prove cavi, 1976
The famous portraitist Enzo Nocera enters the Pirelli factories to photograph the workers in their workplace. These images tell us about the importance of belonging to a group, sharing the fatigue of work day after day, the pride of being part of a factory. A planned shot, posed, which for a moment interrupts production, silencing the dense noise of the factory to grant the men and women, who are oftentimes just numbers, a bit of vanity.
CESARE COLOMBO
Assemblea degli studenti del Politecnico Milano, 1968
One look and we find ourselves immediately in front of the university, participating in the student protests that agitated the hearts of young people and politicians alike in the late ‘60s. Photo reportage works only if it makes us protagonists and not spectators, and in this Cesare Colombo is a master. He is part of the event and we with him, hearing the same noise, trying to see who is speaking through the hands of strangers raised in front of us. It doesn’t matter that the framing is careless, the horizon distorted, the composition contrary to every rule of harmony. What matters is being there.
GABRIELE BASILICO
"Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche", 1978-1980
The gaze becomes a lens, thoughtful, pure and geometrical in the unmistakable style of Gabriele Basilico. The factory dematerializes and transforms into a pattern of lines and forms, of black and white contrasts. Yet something, always, gives three-dimensionality and substance to the image, in this case a large shadow that darkens the entire street and sidewalk in front of the white building. It is the volume of the city behind us, the same city whose outer boundary is defined by the factory itself, while the shadow of a lamppost on the right breaks the linear rhythm of the windows.
ENZO NOCERA
Lanfranco Colombo, "Gente di Brera", 1981
Milan is made of people, of its workers and of the intellectuals and artists who bring ideas to life in the substratum of the urban cultural scene. The studio portraits of Enzo Nocera take us back to a classical vision, placing at the center the individual and his personality, often tied to the profession. Posed portraits with careful lighting and a neutral but distinctive background, painted in rough brushstrokes: the faces of Gente di Brera (‘Brera people’) testify to the historical identity of the quarter, are the testimonies of historical identity of the neighborhood, which in those years was being transformed into the Brera we know today.
GIOVANNI ZILIANI
Pensieri di figure, 1984
The subway stairs are a place of transit par excellence: people move quickly, passing by, no one ever stopping there because the only purpose of this place is to reach another place. Giovanni Ziliani, a painter by training, experimented with shutter speeds of a few tenths of a second, long by photography standards, which prevents us from recognizing the faces of the commuters, making them appear, because of the blurred movement, more like ghosts than as men and women. Thus the individual disappears, blending into the mass to become part of a steady stream of anonymous souls.
TANCREDI MANGANO
"In urbe", 2001
Walking the streets of the city, it is rare that the eye falls upon the plants that grow between the slabs of cement. Yet Tancredi Mangano, in this series, restores their lost dignity and allows us to observe them, helping us discover with amazement an otherwise invisible nature world of incredible variety. The green catches your eye, standing out against the gray background, where walls and roads are conquered, albeit on a very small scale, by a flourishing flora. The titles of the photos, with Latin names like in a herbarium, take us back to botany and the higher scientific study of plant species.
VINCENZO CASTELLA
"Milano 1998"
In this image by Vincenzo Castella, the city becomes a sedimentation of vertical layers, the buildings have distances and structural relationships between them that constitute the representation of the place. The shot does not leave space to the urban landscape, closing in on the small portion of space visible from a window. The eye immediately encounters other buildings, the unfocused grille in the foreground and the uniformity of the colors make us feel trapped in a city that keeps us for itself.
FISCHLI & WEISS
"Untitled (Milano Duomo)", 1992-2000
Milan seen from the Duomo, instead of the Duomo seen from Milan: this is how the team of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss decided to portray the city. The tall spires, unmistakable clues as to where the photograph was taken, tower in the foreground, just as the buildings rise from the city in a game of vertical elements. The reddening sunset merges with the fog and shows us a Milan stripped bare, caught almost by surprise, not having had time to tidy up for the occasion.
THOMAS STRUTH
"Mailand 1998"
The monumental solemnity of the Duomo, heart and symbol of Milan, is presented in all its glory in this large-format photograph (135x160 cm). Thomas Struth, rigorous photographer of great architectural monuments, adopts a frontal view, elevated from the ground and excluding from the frame all the upper decorations and spires. The resulting image is dense, almost squashing the tiny, colorful figures who, as if to play down its grandeur, occupy the lower register.
OLIVO BARBIERI
"site specific_milano 09", 2009
It is with an aerial view, characteristic of many of his works, that Olivo Barbieri shows us the new headquarters of the Region of Lombardy. From this unusual point of view, the image reveals a primordial form not visible from the city nor from any other place. The large-format black and white print (atypical for a photograph so contemporary in subject and language) invites us to scrutinize every detail, allowing us to discover a multitude of details in the bustle of the massive project still under construction.
GIOVANNI HÄNNINEN
29 backstage, Teatro alla Scala, Milano from "La Scala, backstage", 2014-2015
Giovanni Hänninen leads us on a discovery of the Teatro alla Scala through a polyptych of images. La Scala, symbol of Milanese culture, shows itself in all its elegance. The static nature of the scene, made so by the absence of actors and audience, is broken only by the parting curtains. The true subject of the photograph is the elegance of the space, the tasteful decorations in gold and ivory, the crimson velvet curtains and red damask silk of the boxes.
GABRIELE BASILICO
Milano, 2008
Gabriele Basilico shows us the city in color as a living body: the urban fabric is the skin, the streets are connective sinew, the cars and construction vehicles are the blood flowing through its veins. The old must make way for the new in an unavoidable phase of transition. Just below the billboards, on the panels that surround the construction sites, you can see the message Milano si mostra (‘Milan shows itself’), which leads us to discover other images taken in the preceding months by Gabriele Basilico with his classical language.
LUCA CAMPIGOTTO
Milano, 2014
After years of upheavals, excavations, new construction sites, redirected roads and churning concrete mixers , everything seems ready: the city is finished. Luca Campigotto, landscape and architectural photographer, is ready to capture the new identity of Milan. The sun goes down, the lights come on and the spectacle begins, like a secular contemporary manger scene that captivates those who contemplate it.
MUFOCO EDUCATIONAL
IERI OGGI
MILANO
TINO PETRELLI
Milano, 26 Aprile 1945
Ragazze aggregate a gruppi di partigiani in Via Brera
Often in the photo reportage of Tino Petrelli there a two coexisting stories, one tied to the historical circumstances and the other to the people represented therein. It’s April 26th 1945, the day after the liberation of the city from the Nazis, and the resistance fighters have taken to the streets. In the foreground, three women walk purposefully carrying rifles, eyes forward. There is no violence, but rather determination, dressed in skirts and blouses, that conveys an image of female pride. The men follow a few steps behind.
FEDERICO PATELLANI
Milano, 1945
Witness to the reconstruction immediately after the war, Federico Patellani recounts with a delicate eye the story of a man and woman walking arm in arm along a street on the outskirts of Milan, like a scene from a Neorealist film. In a return to normality, they walk toward us as we watch them, leaving behind their joined shadows which point to a lone man proceeding in the opposite direction. The couple are immersed in conversation, or perhaps simply in love, in the manner of days gone by.
PAOLO MONTI
Muro a Milano, 1954
In the 1950s, Milan still carried the scars of a war just recently concluded. Paolo Monti, with a tireless eye for the observation of the material sphere, chooses a tight crop to create a two-dimensional image that leaves little room for understanding the surrounding context. What we see are a wall and a damaged, peeling door, ruins symbolizing the wounds suffered by the city, like the skin of a violated body. The viewer cannot but continuously scrutinize every detail in order to decipher the indecipherable.
GIANNI BERENGO GARDIN
Casa di ringhiera, anni 70
These images by Gianni Berengo Gardin reveal his great ability to capture everyday life from up close. In this case, we feel we are present as he shows us tenements with communal balconies, a collective existence that unfolds on the balconies and between floors. The richness of simplicity can be seen inside and outside the homes, in the men and women of every age, in the railings over which the day’s laundry intermingles with art, in the paintings propped on shelves and the songs improvised as if on a stage. There are only two visible floors, but we can imagine them infinitely continuing above and below, creating unpredictable visual games.
MARIO CATTANEO
Luna Park, 1955-1965
he ‘60s were the years of a newfound serenity in Italy, of which Mario Cattaneo is the poetic and sincere narrator. This image taken at Luna Park is a complex play of intersecting lines, drawings, words, materials and forms in which the eye moves in spirally around until finding repose in the gaze of the boy standing in the center of the scene, who is not looking at the seated girl but at another girl, of whom we can only see her feet at the left edge, thereby taking us out of the frame and opening up our imagination.
ULIANO LUCAS
Piazza Duca D’Aosta, Milano 1968
In the work of Uliano Lucas, reportage combines with social commitment. The low point of view creates a powerful image, an icon of the great emigration from the southern Italy to Milan. The deep symbolic meaning of this photograph is generated by the relationship between the foreground subject, immobile and disoriented, carrying a suitcase and a cardboard box held together by string, and the massive Pirelli skyscraper that looms over him like a giant weight on his shoulders. A metaphor of labor and power, in which man is the gear that enables the great machine to move.
ENZO NOCERA
Pirelli, stabilimento Bicocca
Laboratorio prove cavi, 1976
The famous portraitist Enzo Nocera enters the Pirelli factories to photograph the workers in their workplace. These images tell us about the importance of belonging to a group, sharing the fatigue of work day after day, the pride of being part of a factory. A planned shot, posed, which for a moment interrupts production, silencing the dense noise of the factory to grant the men and women, who are oftentimes just numbers, a bit of vanity.
CESARE COLOMBO
Assemblea degli studenti del Politecnico Milano, 1968
One look and we find ourselves immediately in front of the university, participating in the student protests that agitated the hearts of young people and politicians alike in the late ‘60s. Photo reportage works only if it makes us protagonists and not spectators, and in this Cesare Colombo is a master. He is part of the event and we with him, hearing the same noise, trying to see who is speaking through the hands of strangers raised in front of us. It doesn’t matter that the framing is careless, the horizon distorted, the composition contrary to every rule of harmony. What matters is being there.
GABRIELE BASILICO
"Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche", 1978-1980
The gaze becomes a lens, thoughtful, pure and geometrical in the unmistakable style of Gabriele Basilico. The factory dematerializes and transforms into a pattern of lines and forms, of black and white contrasts. Yet something, always, gives three-dimensionality and substance to the image, in this case a large shadow that darkens the entire street and sidewalk in front of the white building. It is the volume of the city behind us, the same city whose outer boundary is defined by the factory itself, while the shadow of a lamppost on the right breaks the linear rhythm of the windows.
ENZO NOCERA
Lanfranco Colombo, "Gente di Brera", 1981
Milan is made of people, of its workers and of the intellectuals and artists who bring ideas to life in the substratum of the urban cultural scene. The studio portraits of Enzo Nocera take us back to a classical vision, placing at the center the individual and his personality, often tied to the profession. Posed portraits with careful lighting and a neutral but distinctive background, painted in rough brushstrokes: the faces of Gente di Brera (‘Brera people’) testify to the historical identity of the quarter, are the testimonies of historical identity of the neighborhood, which in those years was being transformed into the Brera we know today.
GIOVANNI ZILIANI
Pensieri di figure, 1984
The subway stairs are a place of transit par excellence: people move quickly, passing by, no one ever stopping there because the only purpose of this place is to reach another place. Giovanni Ziliani, a painter by training, experimented with shutter speeds of a few tenths of a second, long by photography standards, which prevents us from recognizing the faces of the commuters, making them appear, because of the blurred movement, more like ghosts than as men and women. Thus the individual disappears, blending into the mass to become part of a steady stream of anonymous souls.
TANCREDI MANGANO
"In urbe", 2001
Walking the streets of the city, it is rare that the eye falls upon the plants that grow between the slabs of cement. Yet Tancredi Mangano, in this series, restores their lost dignity and allows us to observe them, helping us discover with amazement an otherwise invisible nature world of incredible variety. The green catches your eye, standing out against the gray background, where walls and roads are conquered, albeit on a very small scale, by a flourishing flora. The titles of the photos, with Latin names like in a herbarium, take us back to botany and the higher scientific study of plant species.
VINCENZO CASTELLA
"Milano 1998"
In this image by Vincenzo Castella, the city becomes a sedimentation of vertical layers, the buildings have distances and structural relationships between them that constitute the representation of the place. The shot does not leave space to the urban landscape, closing in on the small portion of space visible from a window. The eye immediately encounters other buildings, the unfocused grille in the foreground and the uniformity of the colors make us feel trapped in a city that keeps us for itself.
FISCHLI & WEISS
"Untitled (Milano Duomo)", 1992-2000
Milan seen from the Duomo, instead of the Duomo seen from Milan: this is how the team of Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss decided to portray the city. The tall spires, unmistakable clues as to where the photograph was taken, tower in the foreground, just as the buildings rise from the city in a game of vertical elements. The reddening sunset merges with the fog and shows us a Milan stripped bare, caught almost by surprise, not having had time to tidy up for the occasion.
THOMAS STRUTH
"Mailand 1998"
The monumental solemnity of the Duomo, heart and symbol of Milan, is presented in all its glory in this large-format photograph (135x160 cm). Thomas Struth, rigorous photographer of great architectural monuments, adopts a frontal view, elevated from the ground and excluding from the frame all the upper decorations and spires. The resulting image is dense, almost squashing the tiny, colorful figures who, as if to play down its grandeur, occupy the lower register.
OLIVO BARBIERI
"site specific_milano 09", 2009
It is with an aerial view, characteristic of many of his works, that Olivo Barbieri shows us the new headquarters of the Region of Lombardy. From this unusual point of view, the image reveals a primordial form not visible from the city nor from any other place. The large-format black and white print (atypical for a photograph so contemporary in subject and language) invites us to scrutinize every detail, allowing us to discover a multitude of details in the bustle of the massive project still under construction.
GIOVANNI HÄNNINEN
29 backstage, Teatro alla Scala, Milano from "La Scala, backstage", 2014-2015
Giovanni Hänninen leads us on a discovery of the Teatro alla Scala through a polyptych of images. La Scala, symbol of Milanese culture, shows itself in all its elegance. The static nature of the scene, made so by the absence of actors and audience, is broken only by the parting curtains. The true subject of the photograph is the elegance of the space, the tasteful decorations in gold and ivory, the crimson velvet curtains and red damask silk of the boxes.
GABRIELE BASILICO
Milano, 2008
Gabriele Basilico shows us the city in color as a living body: the urban fabric is the skin, the streets are connective sinew, the cars and construction vehicles are the blood flowing through its veins. The old must make way for the new in an unavoidable phase of transition. Just below the billboards, on the panels that surround the construction sites, you can see the message Milano si mostra (‘Milan shows itself’), which leads us to discover other images taken in the preceding months by Gabriele Basilico with his classical language.
LUCA CAMPIGOTTO
Milano, 2014
After years of upheavals, excavations, new construction sites, redirected roads and churning concrete mixers , everything seems ready: the city is finished. Luca Campigotto, landscape and architectural photographer, is ready to capture the new identity of Milan. The sun goes down, the lights come on and the spectacle begins, like a secular contemporary manger scene that captivates those who contemplate it.
