An exhibition of more than 100 unpublished photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin in Brescia

From February 25 to May 21, 2023, Mo.Ca. - Center for New Cultures is hosting an exhibition of unpublished photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin (Santa Margherita Ligure, 1930), entitled Cose mai viste. Unseen Photographs, curated by Renato Corsini, the brainchild of Gianni Berengo Gardin, with iconographic research by Susanna Berengo Gardin. The exhibition is also imagined as a preview of the VI edition of the Brescia Photo Festival, which this year, from March 24 to July 23, develops around the theme Capital, proposing a rich program of events, spread across the city’s most prestigious exhibition venues. For the first time, 120 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin, all printed for the occasion in a darkroom and on silver salt paper, offer a reinterpretation of his extraordinary path, from the 1950s to the present day, enriching the Master’s monumental iconographic repertoire with some precious new features.

A photographer since 1954, with a seventy-year career, Gianni Berengo Gardin is one of the most representative interpreters of the Italian and international panorama. After careful selection work, assisted by his daughter Susanna, a series of “new” images, never seen before, have re-emerged; photographs that at the time remained buried by others or were more simply overlooked at the time.

“Bringing archives back to life and rereading them,” emphasizes curator Renato Corsini, “is a fundamental value for quality photography; only that which is consolidated strong by the ability to historicize itself, and maintains, and often increases over time its value, both testimonial and artistic, is photography with a capital ’f’.”

The exhibition touches on the most characteristic themes of his research, which ranges from social investigation to everyday life, from the world of work to architecture and landscape with shots from 1954 to 2019 that take the visitor around the world with some unprecedented looks at reality. From Sweden to Moscow, with the still image of the public weighing machine at the market, via the ever-present Venice, the beloved Paris, a pilgrimage to El Rocío in Andalusia, we come to the glimpse of a group of workers doing collective gymnastics at the Osaka Airport construction site in 1993.

The exhibition, accompanied by a book published by Contrasto, once again confirms Berengo Gardin as the master of black and white, capable of building a unique visual heritage of Italy from the postwar period to the present (and not only of our country), characterized by an absolute consistency in linguistic choices and a “craft” approach to work. In the social surveys, as well as in the landscapes, the main subject of his research is always man, caught in the emotional, psychological and deep relationship with the environment that surrounds him.

A sensitive and participatory interpreter, Gianni Berengo Gardin has observed the world many times, returning and returning to visit places that over time have become familiar to his gaze and to our memory. Gianni Berengo Gardin was born in Santa Margherita in 1930 and has lived in Milan since 1965. He has collaborated with major national and international press publications, but has mainly devoted himself to the creation of photographic books, with over 260 volumes published. For the Italian Touring Club he has produced a large series of volumes on Italy and European countries. He has worked for Olivetti and major Italian industries with company reports and monographs. His archive contains about two million strictly black and white shots ranging from humanist reportage to environmental description, from social investigation to industrial photography, from architecture to landscape.

He has held more than 350 solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, and his images are part of the collections of major international museums and cultural foundations, such as MoMA in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Musèe de l’Elysée in Lausanne, and the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. Among the many awards he has received are the Leica Oskar Barnack in 1995, the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008, the Kapuscinski Prize for Reportage in 2014, and the Leica Hall of Fame Award in 2017. Among other books, with Contrasto he has published Gianni Berengo Gardin (2005), Il racconto del riso (2013), Il libro dei libri (2014), Manicomi (2015), Venezia e le grandi navi (2015), Vera fotografia (2016), In festa. Viaggio nella cultura popolare italiana (2017), La più gioconda veduta del mondo (2019), In parole povere (2020), L’occhio come mestiere (2022). His archive and production are exclusively managed by Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia.

Opening hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m. (last admission 6 p.m.). Tickets: full 5 euros, reduced 4 euros, groups 5 euros, schools 4 euros. Information: https://bresciamusei.com.

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An exhibition of more than 100 unpublished photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin in Brescia

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