TOhe was called “a craftsman”, and not an artistthus expressing one’s antipathy for aesthetic photography. Gianni Berengo Gardin died in Genoa, at the age of 94, leaving over two million negatives, more than 260 published books, over 360 personal exhibitions all over the world.
Gianni Berengo Gardin died, goodbye to the master of photography
Born on 10 October 1930, Gianni Berengo Gardin was originally from Santa Margherita Ligure (Genoa) but He considered Venice his true hometown (for paternal descent): There he had studied and lived. The city had remained on him, so much so that It has photographed it practically for a lifetime, with a participatory and critical look.
In his first book, “Venise des Saisons” (1965), he told it as a non -tourist, intimate, daily city made of workers, children playing, craftsmen, fog and silences. He returned for the dispute at the 1968 Biennale, until the project on (and against) the Great shipsin collaboration with FAI in Milan and Venice in 2014 and 2015.
Gianni Berengo Gardin at Maxxi in Rome in 2022 (Photo by Tiziana Fabi / AFP) (Photo by Tiziana Fabi / Afp via Getty Images)
The Ligurian origins, the commitment to Venice, the career in Milan
Just more than twenty years old he had joined the La Gondola photographic circle. Invited by Italo Zannier, he was part of the Friulian group for a new photograph and then of the photographic group ‘Il Ponte’. His amateur photography immediately obtained an excellent response. His official debut was in 1954 on the pages of the weekly “Il Mondo”, directed by Mario Pannunzio, with whom he collaborated up to 1965. From there the path of collaborations began, among others, with the Italian Touring Club (1966-1983), the De Agostini Geographical Institute, and with companies symbol of the Italian industry, from Olivetti to Fiat, from Alfa Romeo to IBM.
The “Things Never Seen” exhibition in Alessandria in 2024. (Photo by Roberto Serra – Press/Getty Images) Iguana)
In 1965, after Rome, Paris (he was also “Portboars” by Doisneau) and Lugano, chose to move to Milanwhere the many collaborations began with the major Italian and international newspapers, from “Domus” to “L’Espresso” from “Time” to “Le Figaro”. But above all he began to give life to his wonderful photographic books.
The photojournalists, from Italian asylums to gypsies, from India to construction sites
Like “Dying class ”, published with Einaudi, together with Carla Cerati and under the guidance of Franco Basagliawhich reveals the inhuman conditions of Italian asylums for the first time. “We only photographed with the consent of the sick – he said – but we didn’t want to show the disease, but the condition”. Net, raw and cruel images, which contributed to a cultural battle and, in 1978, to the Basaglia law. In 2022, Gardin retraced the experience in the film In the gardens of the mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xszldvdbmgk
Other fundamental works are “Gypsies in Palermo”, “India of the villages”, the photographs of the Renzo Piano construction sites (from 1979 to 2012).
He was the master of black and white, applied to the photography of documentation, reportage and social investigation. Without ever giving up the filter of irony and the incursion of displaced details. And instead renouncing any manipulation. “Real photography“It is the formula with which he has stamped his autographed prints in recent decades of work. Digital, he claimed, “does not do for documentary photography”. While that has always been his goal: not art but the truth. “My work is absolutely not artistic and I don’t want to pass through an artist,” he reiterated. “The photographer’s commitment should not be artistic, but social and civil».
The awards to Gianni Berengo Gardin
Among the many awards (Berengo Gardin was the most awarded and internationally recognized Italian photographer) the Lucie Award to his career, in 2008, Prize already awarded to giants such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks and Elliott Erwitt. In 2009, the State University of Milan gave him the Honoris Causa degree in history of art criticism. In 2017 he was welcomed into the Leica Hall of Fame.
His photographs are kept in the most prestigious museums in the world and cultural institutions, From the New York Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Reina Sofía in Madrid, to the Maxxi in Rome. Its archive – more than two million shots – is now managed by Forma for photography Foundationwhich continues to disclose the work and the inheritance. The exhibition is still ongoing Gianni Berengo Gardin photographs Giorgio Morandi’s study At the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, until September 28, 2025.