25 marzo - 16 maggio 2009, London
Opening at Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street, London, the exhibition of the work of Mario Giacomelli “Puglia”. Widely regarded as the greatest Italian photographer of the twentieth century, Mario Giacomelli was born in Senigallia, Italy, in 1925. Following a poor formal education, he began his working life as a jobbing printer, before training as a typographer and did not fully embrace photography until he was 30 years old. Despite this late start and his sometimes unconventional almost naïve approach, and in some ways because of it, Giacomelli is now considered one of the most original photographic artists of the twentieth-century. The combination of his experimental working methods with the sometimes brutal imagery of his subject matter create a very personal, but playful and poetic exploration of the region in which he lived his life. Giacomelli’s initial inspiration came from the gritty and grainy post-war Neo-Realist films of Rossellini and De Sica and also from the graphic effects and calligraphic line he had used in printing. He continued to work in, and later run, a print shop in Senigallia throughout his adult life. Above all, Giacomelli saw himself as a poet with a camera. His love of written poetry too was to become the principal source of his (self-) education, allowing him the freedom to build meaning into his work and helping him mask the feelings of inadequacy that a poor schooling had left. The exhibition includes original manuscripts of poems alongside the prints, emphasizing the very strong link he felt between these two media. “Photography is not difficult, as long as you have something to say”. Giacomelli’s famous statement underlines his casual disregard for the technical intricacies of the photographic process. Once he was given a new camera with an exposure meter, but threw it away in favour of his simple point-and-shoot model. This rawness of approach is a key characteristic of his work and his obliviousness to accepted dark-room practices resulted in the creation of works which were completely unique in style. […] Info: tel +44 (0)20 72244192 e-mail: info@atlasgallery.com - www.atlasgallery.com