An exhibition in Milan dedicated to photographer Gian Butturini

From Jan. 28 to March 6, 2022, STILL Fotografia in Milan (via Zamenhof 11) pays tribute to Gian Butturini (1935-2006), one of Italy’s most original and internationally acclaimed photojournalists with an exhibition entitled Gian Butturini. A Photographer Against.

The exhibition, curated by Gigliola Foschi and Stefano Piantini, and promoted by theGian Butturini Association, presents fifty photographs, taken from two of his most famous works and books(London by Gian Butturini and From Ireland after Londonderry) that recount, on the one hand, the contradictions of London in the late 1960s, in the period that has gone down in history as Swinging London, when, that is the English capital had become a melting pot of new trends related to fashion, music, art and culture in general, on the other, the political and social tensions inNorthern Ireland that followed Bloody Sunday, the massacre that took place in Derry on January 30, 1972 when the British army fired on the crowd of protesters, killing fourteen.

Butturini, who began shooting images about the Northern Irish conflict a week after the Derry events, testifies to the radicalization of the political and military situation there. Butturini does not seek to create deliberately strong images, fixing war or protest actions, as much as, as a true photojournalist, to make people see and understand what is happening. And he does so with great capacity for testimony and photographic composition combined with an equally remarkable political and human sensitivity. In the atmospheres so dark and threatening, among barricades, frisian horses, barbed wires, soldiers armed with machine guns, burned cars on the sides of the roads, Butturini portrays children, innocent victims in a dramatic conflict. The section devoted to London recounts the English capital from a new, critical, unpolished perspective and documents Butturini’s forays into the London streets populated by girls in miniskirts, immigrants, junkies, outcasts, City dwellers who seem to live in a world apart. It is a London outside the stereotypes that emerges from his shots, capturing all its contradictions with an innovative eye, where documentary investigation, graphic interventions and written pages combine for expressive purposes.

“This is an exhibition,” says Gigliola Foschi, “in defense of freedom of speech, image and thought. An exhibition against a cancel culture that, without confrontation or discussion, in liberal England caused the book London by Gian Butturini to be withdrawn from the market and besmirched the figure of a man who had been committed all his life against all forms of racism and injustice.”

It was in fact a double image featuring a black woman selling subway tickets locked inside a cubbyhole and a gorilla in a cage that, instead of arousing indignation at the plight of two living beings, both rightly trapped and discriminated against, as was Butturini’s intent, triggered an accusation of “overt racism,” forcing the publisher to remove the volume from bookstores. The exhibition ideally closes with a dozen group of Situationist collages, works in which Butturini, a photographer as well as a graphic designer, intervenes with color and scratchy lettering on comic strips from the 1970s. Batman or Nembo Kid (as Superman was once called in Italy), for example, are transformed into counterculture heroes who provocatively overthrow and twist the meanings proposed by the dominant culture.

Accompanying the exhibition is a book published by STILL/Pazzini Editore with a text by Gigliola Foschi.

Gian Butturini (1935 - 2006), international photojournalist and multifaceted communication artist, established himself as a young man in Brescia as an interior designer and architect. In 1969 he published London by Gian Butturini; in 2017 a reprint of the book was published (Damiani editore) with a preface by Martin Parr, later withdrawn from the market on charges of “overt racism,” without which it could be discussed. He has produced forty photographic books, including Cuba 26 July, From Ireland after Londonderry, Tu Interni Io Libero with Franco Basaglia, Once upon a time there was the Wall; WOMEN the look, the stories with an introduction by Carla Cerati and two volumes devoted to Chilean history. In the autobiographical DAIQUIRI (Edizioni Mimesis) she narrated the chronicles of her reportages. His photos were exhibited in Strange and Familiar at the Barbican Centre in London, Manchester Art Gallery and Somerset House on the occasion of PHOTO LONDON 2018. As a director, he has produced documentaries, including Crimes of Peace, with music by Luigi Nono, and Bologna, 10.15 strage. He also made the film Il Mondo degli Ultimi with Lino Capolicchio, which won awards at various international festivals. The author’s cultural legacy is currently promoted by the Gian Butturini Association.

For all information, you can visit the official website of STILL Photography. To learn more about the artist, you can click here.

An exhibition in Milan dedicated to photographer Gian Butturini

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