Gianni Berengo Gardin in Volterra: 24 shots commented by names in art and culture

From April 16 to September 30, 2025, the Centro Studi Espositivo Santa Maria Maddalena in Volterra will host the exhibition Gianni Berengo Gardin. Le foto commentate, an exhibition that brings together twenty-four photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin (Santa Margherita Ligure, 1930), a master of Italian photography, each accompanied by a text written by a leading figure in culture, art and architecture. The exhibition is sponsored by Anima di Volterra with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra and the Cathedral Basilica of Volterra, and produced by Opera Laboratori in collaboration with Contrasto. The exhibition presents a sober and powerful layout that allows visitors to immerse themselves in more than eighty years of history, filtered through the gaze of Gianni Berengo Gardin and reinterpreted by the words of personalities who have shared paths, visions and friendships with him.

Born in 1930, he has traversed entire decades with his camera, recounting Italy and its changes with a direct and unartificial style. He never pursued aesthetics as an end in itself, but always chose to document reality, with rigor and humanity, paying attention to people, places and social transformations. A photographer by vocation rather than by trade, he has been an attentive and passionate witness of everyday life, popular culture, work, madness, marginality, but also of the elegance and beauty hidden in the details. His images, in black and white, have entered the collective imagination, helping to build a shared visual memory of our country.

Distinguished voices for twenty-four photographs

At the heart of the Volterra exhibition is precisely the relationship between images and words. Each photograph selected from Berengo Gardin’s immense archive is flanked by an original text written by personalities from the worlds of art, cinema, photography, architecture, criticism and journalism.

A chorus of voices that includes names such as Carlo Verdone, Marco Bellocchio, Franco Maresco and Alina Marazzi, who recount the photographer’s cinematic gaze; architects such as Renzo Piano, Stefano Boeri and Vittorio Gregotti, who reflect on the urban and human landscape in his images; and artists such as Mimmo Paladino, Alfredo Pirri and Jannis Kounellis, who read his works in a poetic and symbolic key. There is no shortage of writers and critics such as Roberto Cotroneo, Maurizio Maggiani, Goffredo Fofi, Lea Vergine and Giovanna Calvenzi, who offer literary and historical interpretations; photographers such as Sebastião Salgado, Ferdinando Scianna and Luca Nizzoli Toetti, who reveal the secrets of the craft and respect for a colleague who set the standard. The voice of science and social engagement also finds space, with contributions from Domenico De Masi and psychiatrist Peppe Dell’Acqua, a member of Franco Basaglia’s team. Reflections by Mario Calabresi, Michele Smargiassi and Marco Magnifico, president of FAI, as well as street artist Alice Pasquini complete the picture.

A tribute also to the encounters that marked an entire career

The exhibition is a tribute to the encounters that marked his life and career. In fact, the decision to entrust the presentation of the images to friends, colleagues and intellectuals represents a way to recount photography as a collective gesture, the result of a glance but also of a network of relationships, exchanges, affinities.

Each text thus becomes a second level of reading, which does not explain but accompanies the image, opening new perspectives, evoking emotions, placing the photo in a broader context. It is a project that combines photographic art with narrative, transforming the exhibition into a reflective experience. Gianni Berengo Gardin. The commented photos is part of the larger exhibition Anima di Volterra, a cultural initiative that unites different places in the city in a single itinerary. In fact, visitors can continue their visit by discovering with a single free audio guide also Piazza San Giovanni, the Cathedral, the Baptistery and the Antico Ospedale, home of the Centro Studi Espositivo Santa Maria Maddalena. A journey through art, spirituality, architecture and history, allowing the photographic exhibition to be contextualized in a very rich urban and cultural fabric, making the experience even more complete and engaging.

Notes on the artist

Gianni Berengo Gardin is among the most influential Italian photographers. After living in several European cities, he settled in Milan since 1965, where he started his professional career devoting himself mainly to reportage, social investigation, architecture and landscape. He collaborates with important Italian and international newspapers, but finds his most accomplished expression in photographic books: he publishes more than 260 of them. His first images appeared in 1954 in Mario Pannunzio’s Il Mondo, with which he collaborated until 1965. From 1966 to 1983 he worked with the Touring Club Italiano on a vast series of volumes on Italy and Europe. He also photographs for the Istituto Geografico De Agostini and for large companies such as Olivetti, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, IBM and Italsider. Between 1979 and 2012 he follows and documents Renzo Piano’s architectural projects.

His talent was recognized internationally: in 1972 Modern Photography included him among the “32 World’s Top Photographers”; three years later he was cited by Cecil Beaton in The Magic Image. The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day, selected by Bill Brandt for an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and in 1982 he is mentioned by Ernst Gombrich in The Image and the Eye. Italo Zannier calls him “the most remarkable photographer of the postwar period.” In 2003 he is among the artists chosen for the exhibition Les choix d’Henri Cartier-Bresson, while Hans-Michael Koetzle devotes ample space to him in the volume Eyes Wide Open! (2015).

Over the course of his career, he has had more than 360 solo exhibitions, participating in events such as Photokina, Montreal Expo (1967), Milan Expo (2015), the Venice Biennale, and the exhibition The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968 at the Guggenheim in New York (1994). Among the most recent exhibitions: in 2016 True Photography. Reportage, Images, Encounters at PalaExpo in Rome and in 2022 The Eye as a Craft at MAXXI. Also notable is the reportage on the transit of large ships in Venice, exhibited in 2014 and 2015 with FAI. He has received numerous awards: the Scanno Prize (1981), the Brassaï Prize (1990), the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (1995), the Oscar Goldoni Prize (1998), the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement (2008), the Laurea Honoris Causa in Art History and Criticism (2009), the Kapuściński Prize (2014) and the Leica Hall of Fame Award (2017). His works are in the collections of prestigious international institutions such as MoMA in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, and MAXXI in Rome.

Gianni Berengo Gardin in Volterra: 24 shots commented by names in art and culture

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