Gianni Berengo Gardin's shots on display in Castelnuovo Magra. Also an unpublished

From June 25 to October 9, 2022, the Tower of the Castle of the Bishops of Luni in Castelnuovo Magra will host the exhibition Gianni Berengo Gardin on its five floors. Color Distracts. A world in black and white, curated by Elisabetta Sacconi, in collaboration with Susanna Berengo Gardin.

Specially designed for the halls of the Tower, the exhibition focuses on shots of reportages that the famous photographer Gianni Berengo Gardin (Santa Margherita Ligure, 1930) took abroad. Each floor is dedicated to a different stop in a specific geographical place, and the visitor makes a journey to different parts of the world through the photographs on display. It starts in Paris (1953-1954) and arrives first in New York (1969), then in Spain (1970-1973), Great Britain (1976-1977) and finally in India (1976-1977). An exhibition itinerary in chronological order that offers the reports Berengo Gardin made both for important commissions, such as that of the Touring Club, and driven by a desire to know. His innate ability to “witness something” and his being essentially a storyteller meet his curiosity to see the world.

"Photography is not art, photography is document," according to the famous photographer, and that is why each image constitutes a cross-section of the life and customs of an entire society; it is narrative and memory of a past that has transcended time and come down to us. The camera lens is the tool for capturing stories and highlighting social aspects, understanding the way of life. The wide-angle lens widens the gaze to landscapes, cities, streets, which are scenarios always contaminated by human presence, told in its everydayness. Gianni Berengo Gardin is so immersed in reality that he is never even touched by adventure as an end in itself or the forced construction of something that is not there.

What he represents in his shots is a world in black and white, because he is deeply convinced that color distracts from the content, that it leads one to look at the detail and not the whole, as the very title of the exhibition emphasizes.

An advocate that “good” photographs do not need captions or titles, that a place and a date are enough, Berengo Gardin has a clear and precise memory of each one. He remembers whether he made it with a single lucky shot or with patient waiting; he remembers the decisive moment and the next one, outlining its contours. In fact, the exhibition route is accompanied by the photographer’s personal narrative, short texts that the visitor is invited to take with him. On the top floor, on the other hand, an interview with the photographer is projected, curated by Maurizio Garofalo, where his more intimate side also emerges, with self-portraits and family moments that he rarely chooses to exhibit.

In a digital world, Gianni Berengo Gardin still remains uniquely tied to the use of the analog camera and film, so much so that since 2001 he has authenticated each of his photographic prints with a stamp that leaves little to the imagination: “True photography, not corrected, modified or invented on the computer.”

Sections

(1953-1954) Paris. Long stay in Paris marks a transition, from amateur to professional photographer. He is young and it is here that the great photographers work, the great cultural figures live, but above all it is here that he makes his first reportages, observing every corner of the city and all its varied humanity: kisses, for example, become a motif of many shots, struck by the fact that at that time in Italy they were instead forbidden in public.

(1969) New York. He knew the United States even before he went there, through reading Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dos Passos. New York is captured in its normality, like the child in the carnival mask and the boys disheveled by the wind, but also in its complexity, in the years that marked not only American history, but world history.

(1970-1973) Spain. From reportages in Spain comes the first volume in the Touring Club’s Through Europe series, with texts by writer Giovanni Arpino. White villages and sun-drenched countryside that were already beginning to change, landscapes that seem almost metaphysical interspersed with lives portrayed in their everyday life, and the fiestas, representing centuries of religious and social history: among them the photograph of the Holy Week procession in Seville wanted by Cartier-Bresson for his private collection. And alongside those well-known ones also an unpublished one, the photograph of workers on break that Gianni Berengo Gardin decided to print for the first time just for this exhibition.

(1976-1977) Great Britain. Of England Berengo Gardin is fond of everything, “the pipes, the tobacco, the shoes, the clothes, the cars.” And here is the very famous Morris, actually overlooking the sea with many others on a windy day, but immortalized because it was the only one with two people on board sheltered from the cold. But also iconic is the photograph of the Royal Ascot event showing the participants’ strict dress code of feathers, hats and tight-fitting suits.

(1976-1977) India. The reportage in India grew out of a personal project by Gianni Berengo Gardin. An admirer of Gandhi, who urged Westerners not to stop at the idea of the India of big cities, he visited villages, hamlets, and the countryside, living with peasants and their families, managing to find the true essence of their world. Here the human presence merges with the landscape, widening the point of view, but always remaining central to the narrative.

Hours: June, September, October (Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon and 4 to 7 p.m.

July and August (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 5 to 8:30 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to noon and 5 to 8:30 p.m.)

Tickets: Full 7 euros, reduced 5 euros.

Gianni Berengo Gardin's shots on display in Castelnuovo Magra. Also an unpublished

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