Born in Santa Margherita Ligure in 1930 and Venetian by origin, Gianni Berengo Gardin is one of the leading Italian representatives of photo journalism and social documentary photography. The conceptual synthesis of his work may be enclosed in the formula “true photography” with which he stamps his autograph prints, and which refers to the absence of any a posteriori manipulation, typical of the analogue image and the work of the photographer as “artisan”.
His training as a photographer took place in Venice, where he returned after spending the war years in Rome. His activity began with the collaboration with Mario Pannunzio’s cultural weekly Il Mondo, a reference point for a whole generation of photojournalists. Berengo Gardin’s first photographic book was Venise des saisons (1965), in which Venice is portrayed in a daily perspective. And in Venice he came into contact with Paolo Monti and with circles such as La Gondola, in which the amateur logic, prevalent until that moment, was beginning to be questioned.
In those years, publications by Farm Security Administration, Dorothea Lange and W. Eugene Smith contributed to the formation of his photographic culture: thanks to these and to the encounter with French humanist photography during his two-year stay in Paris, Berengo Gardin defined his working method, his interest in anthropological social reporting and in photography as a “document” rather than as an artistic expression.
In 1965, after his experiences in Rome, Venice, Lugano and Paris, he moved to Milan permanently, and here he frequented the Jamaica Bar, meeting place for the city’s art scene. In these years he also began his long association with the world of industry: the company photo reports for Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Pirelli, and especially Olivetti, with whom he collaborated for fifteen years, brought him to develop a keen interest in the world of labour.
Morire di classe, in 1968, was one of the most significant research projects of the post-World War II period: created together with Carla Cerati, it documented for the first time the conditions inside psychiatric hospitals in several institutes throughout Italy. Curated by Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia, the volume contributed significantly to the construction of the movement of opinion that led to the approval of Law 180 for the closing down of asylums in 1978.
Berengo Gardin’s work, meanwhile, found a vast field of expression in editorial production. He in fact published over 250 volumes, many of which in collaboration with photographers such as Gabriele Basilico, Luciano D’Alessandro, Ferdinando Scianna. His twenty year-long collaboration with Touring Club Italiano and with De Agostini led him to continuously investigate the Italian landscape while, with Renzo Piano, he started experimenting in the field of architectural documentation from the 1970s on.
At the heart of these projects, such as Dentro le case (1977), Dentro il lavoro (1978) or La disperata allegria (1994) whose subject is the life of the Roma communities in Florence, there is always a social and humanistic interest. This is also the case in his most recent project Venezia e le Grandi Navi (2013): his photographs make up a narrative that is at once faithful to the language of historical photojournalism, but also capable of creating iconic images that condense contradictions and many layers of meaning.