“Photography is an alchemy: its materials and processes are symbolic and the artist brings himself, his own existential journey, into play”.

To mark Mario Giacomelli’s first centenary, the Archivio Giacomelli has promoted a series of events designed to celebrate the artistic and cultural legacy of one of Italian photography’s greatest masters. The high point in the celebrations is a major exhibition that is due to be held simultaneously at the Palazzo Esposizioni in Rome and the Palazzo Reale in Milan, offering visitors two complementary experiences exploring the many different aspects of Giacomelli’s multi-faceted work.

Curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Katiuscia Biondi Giacomelli, the exhibition will be showcasing a vast selection from the master’s photographic output as a whole, highlighting his astonishing ability to cross over and to cross-contaminate different artistic disciplines. Each exhibition will consist of roughly 300 original prints, many of which are unpublished and have never been shown in public before now. In Rome, the focus will be on the relationship between Giacomelli’s work and the contemporary visual arts, while the exhibition in Milan will be exploring Giacomelli’s deep bond with poetry, revealing how his research was interwoven with the lyrical world, succeeding in transforming images into a kind of poetic narrative.

The exhibition at the Palazzo Espozioni in Rome, entitled Mario Giacomelli. The photographer and the artist, will accompany visitors on a journey through a variety of theme-based rooms, proposing a series of dialogues between the work of five great masters of contemporary photography and art, Afro Basaldella and Alberto Burri, Jannis Kounellis, Enzo Cucchi, Roger Ballen, and a number of Mario Giacomelli’s photographic series.

A room at the very heart of the exhibition will be given over entirely to the celebrated series Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto [I have no hands caressing my face] (1961-1963), which made Mario Giacomelli’s name on the international scene in the early 1960s. Designed in the shape of an installation, the room will convey the energy and the circular movement that breathes life into the series, enhancing its performative dimension. The pictures of young seminarists, suspended between playfulness and spirituality, are pure visual poetry and are still eminently capable today of moving and involving the observer with their timeless intensity.
 

Immagine: Mario Giacomelli, Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto, 1961-63 © Archivio Mario Giacomelli