Mario Giacomelli: Little Priests
Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès
6e | Paris | FranceFrom 2001, the Berthet-Aittouarès gallery presents the various aspects of the deep and singular work of the Italian photographer: the chronicle of the villages of Scanno in Abruzzo, of Senigallia in the province of Marche, the landscapes seen from the sky to the intimate space of his work, photographed in the late 90s, as he neared death.
Today, through 33 old prints, mostly unpublished vintages, a new reading of the cult series of seminarians is offered. This was carried out at the beginning of the 1960s after his foray into the episcopal seminary of Senigallia, as Don Enzo Formiconi, the rector, had allowed it to risk being dismissed.
Senigallia's series of seminarians would experience a first visibility in 1963 at the Photokina in Cologne, then John Szarkowski opened the photography collection of the MoMA in New York to it in 1967. Without moving away from the aesthetic bias offered by the contrast of the black cassocks with the snow and the glare of the sun, Giacomelli's images transmit a component of the reality of young people who are not always motivated by a vocation, sent to the seminary by families too happy to have a son accessible to education and one less mouth to feed.
Inscribed by Giacomelli as an epigraph of the Pretini, "Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto." I have no hands that caress my face", the first line of a poem written by Padre Davide Maria Turoldo, sets the humanist, social and political tone of this second part devoted by the photographer to young people removed from the affection of the family or the love of their age.
From 2001, the Berthet-Aittouarès gallery presents the various aspects of the deep and singular work of the Italian photographer: the chronicle of the villages of Scanno in Abruzzo, of Senigallia in the province of Marche, the landscapes seen from the sky to the intimate space of his work, photographed in the late 90s, as he neared death.
Today, through 33 old prints, mostly unpublished vintages, a new reading of the cult series of seminarians is offered. This was carried out at the beginning of the 1960s after his foray into the episcopal seminary of Senigallia, as Don Enzo Formiconi, the rector, had allowed it to risk being dismissed.
Senigallia's series of seminarians would experience a first visibility in 1963 at the Photokina in Cologne, then John Szarkowski opened the photography collection of the MoMA in New York to it in 1967. Without moving away from the aesthetic bias offered by the contrast of the black cassocks with the snow and the glare of the sun, Giacomelli's images transmit a component of the reality of young people who are not always motivated by a vocation, sent to the seminary by families too happy to have a son accessible to education and one less mouth to feed.
Inscribed by Giacomelli as an epigraph of the Pretini, "Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto." I have no hands that caress my face", the first line of a poem written by Padre Davide Maria Turoldo, sets the humanist, social and political tone of this second part devoted by the photographer to young people removed from the affection of the family or the love of their age.
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