The story unfolds along a path of more than 150 photographs, including the most famous, the lesser-known and the previously unpublished ones: a unique visual heritage, from the post-war period to the present day, characterized by coherent linguistic choices and a craftsman”s approach to photographic practice.

From Venice captured in his first photographs to Milan, with its industries, intellectuals and workers’ struggles; from places of work (reportages made for Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Pirelli and especially Olivetti) to sites of everyday life; from psychiatric hospitals (with Morire di classe in 1968) to the world of gipsies; from many small rural villages to large cities; from L’Aquila hit by the earthquake to the MAXXI under construction photographed in 2009.

Through a fluid and non-chronological itinerary, the exhibition offers a reflection on the distinctive features of Berengo Gardin’s research. Including the centrality of man and his place in social space; the concrete but also poetically analog nature of his ‘real’ (uncut, unmanipulated) photography; the power and specificity of his way of constructing the narrative sequence, which leaves no room for simple descriptions of space but naturally builds stories.

Gianni Berengo Gardin

Born in 1930 in Santa Margherita Ligure, Gianni Berengo Gardin is considered one of the greatest Italian masters of reportage photography. In almost seventy years of his career, Berengo Gardin has documented with his images the evolution of Italian culture and society from the post-war period to today, creating an extraordinary visual heritage. His work portrays different people, cities and places in Italy, focusing on a wide variety of themes ranging from social, everyday life, architecture and landscape. About two hundred of his countless photographs are presented at MAXXI in his solo exhibition that takes up the title of the famous 1970 book edited by Cesare Colombo, The eye as vocation.