Benedette foto! Carmelo Bene visto da Claudio Abate

edited by Daniela Lancioni with Francesca Rachele Oppedisano

A portrait of one of the greatest figures in contemporary Italian theatre by one of the leading practitioners of auteur photography “Thank God for photos!” This is what Carmelo Bene wrote in his first autobiography, recalling how the photographs of Claudio Abate led to his acquittal on charges of indecency for the staging of Cristo 63. Ten years after the death of Carmelo Bene, Abate’s images bear vital witness once again in this monograph celebrating the man and his work in theatre.

About 120 photographs in black and white and colour taken between 1963 and 1973 on the opening nights and sometimes also during the rehearsals of ten of Carmelo Bene’s first productions, from Cristo 63 (1963) to Salomè (1973), all works of which Claudio Abate’s largely unpublished images constitute the only known visual record at present. The volume ends with the shots taken during the making of the film of Salomè in 1972, all colour photographs that give an effective idea of what the “gamble of light and colour” meant for Carmelo Bene.

Claudio Abate’s photographs capture the theatre of Carmelo Bene, pinpointing figures and objects and their spatial relations with all of his customary and exemplary clarity. Moreover, they also make it possible to verify many of the elements that the notes later published by Carmelo Bene show to have played a crucial part in these early works: some celebrated inventions, the lighting, and sometimes the importance attached to costumes and make-up, including the mosaic-like masks of costume jewellery he often used. Above all, as Jean-Paul Manganaro writes in the accompanying text, they bear witness to the particular moments in which Carmelo Bene took stock of the power of his scenic decisions, affording insight into the exceptional nature of a type of stagecraft already vibrant with the forms, lights and shadows that were to be his constant trademarks, his own programme for constant reworking and exploration.

Benedette foto! Carmelo Bene visto da Claudio Abate

Skira, 2012

24 x 24 cm

128 pages

123 colours, paperback

ISBN 978-88-572-1756-7

€ 30,00

Special exhibition price € 27,00