Photo Exhibition: Mario De Biasi – The Intrepid Hunter of Images

Mario De Biasi personifies the figure of an eclectic artist who built himself up in post-war Italy. Born in Belluno in 1923, he took up photography upon his return to Italy after the war in 1946. For a few years he combined this passion with his work as a radio technician, until in 1953 he was hired by the magazine Epoca - Mondadori's historic weekly, considered the Italian Life - thus becoming the first photographer to have a permanent job on the staff of an Italian magazine. He remained at Epoca for more than thirty years, during which time he signed hundreds of covers and countless reportages from all over the world documenting not only the beauty of places and landscapes, the latest in cinema and the latest trends in fashion and architecture, but also news stories, natural disasters and war events. For the readers of Epoca, De Biasi embodied the intrepid explorer perpetually travelling to the ends of the earth - in every desert, battlefield, mundane event or natural phenomenon - the need for adventure, exoticism, escapism and information of those who, in those years, could only experience it on the pages of a magazine. In the course of his career, Mario De Biasi has built around his experiences a model of refined and at the same time authentically popular reportage photography, which today has become a benchmark in the international photojournalistic scene.

Each shot highlights a small or big story, each shot records a piece of reality that the artist captures masterfully, without ever neglecting the balance of forms and the harmony of chiaroscuro. Particularly significant are his reportages on unknown Italy; the portraits of show business celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren; the images of New York in the 1950s; or, again, his world icon, the famous shot Gli italiani si voltano, exhibited in 1994 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Among the prizes and awards he has received are the title of Master of Italian Photography, the highest honour of the Italian Federation of Photographic Associations, and the AIF Career Achievement Award. His major international exhibitions include: The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968, Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (1994-95); Mario De Biasi. A photographic journey (2004), Italian Cultural Institute, Los Angeles, USA; Mario De Biasi. Changing Japan 1950-1980 (2011), Japan Camera Museum, Tokyo, Japan.

Exhibition curated by Enrica Viganò - ADMIRA, Milan