An exhibition in Abano Terme showcases the shots of stage photographer Mimmo Cattarinich

The faces of great actors and directors from the history of international cinema such as Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Anthony Quinn, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, Capucine, Catherine Deneuve, Roberto Benigni, Claudia Cardinale, and Maria Callas but also contemporary stars such as Giuseppe Tornatore, Pedro Almodovar, Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, Isabelle Huppert, Rupert Everett, Rutger Hauer, Carlo Verdone, Monica Bellucci, Natalie Portman, and Penelope Cruz are just some of the protagonists of Mimmo Cattarinich’s photographs, to whom the Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum in Abano Terme is dedicating the exhibition BACKSTAGE from February 9 to June 16, 2024. Mimmo Cattarinich and the Magic of the Stage Photographer curated by Dominique Lora. 100 photographs from the immense archive of theMimmo Cattarinich Cultural Association in Rome, capable of telling the story of Italian and international cinema from the 1960s to the present day.

Cinema and photography, visual languages born almost simultaneously, have always shared and exchanged narrative techniques and aesthetic inspirations, generating that complex network of relationships that stimulates experimentation and creativity, a narrative dichotomy born from a natural dialogue in which imagery, inspiration and subversion are acts of reciprocity and exchange. Photography documents cinema and reveals its concealed gesture, its stolen emotion, portraying in images instants of life behind the scenes: it is a complementary language capable of laying subjects bare, revealing their mysteries and recounting their vulnerability.

Looking at cinema through the lens of the set photographer is a complex, interdisciplinary experience organized around three major subjects that, by unmasking cinematic fiction, reveal all the humanistic essence of this research: the representation of the real behind the scenes, the portrait of the actor within and beyond the scene, and the relationship between cinema and art.

What unites the subjects portrayed by Mimmo Cattarinich is the tension to diversity: bodily alterations, attitudes of defiance or exhibition, characteristics that contribute to making them real, transparent and vulnerable. The photographer transposes dreams and emotions of individuals onto film, revealing their present reality and aspirations.

The exhibition is roduced by Glocal Project Consulting in collaboration with CoopCulture and Mimmo Cattarinich Cultural Association.

Mimmo Cattarinich (Rome, 1937 - 2017) can be defined as one of the Italian authors who forged the history of Italian and international film photography. In his work is evident a stylistic signature that culturally goes beyond his being Italian, offering us an extraordinary mosaic of images that reconstructs epochs, trends and evolutions of Western society from the postwar period to the present day. His shots, published in important Italian and foreign magazines, offer a significant insight into the Made in Italy dream factory.

Pictured: Mimmo Cattarinich, Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of “Medea” (1969). Courtesy Cultural Association Mimmo Cattarinich

An exhibition in Abano Terme showcases the shots of stage photographer Mimmo Cattarinich

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