Mario Giacomelli ITALIAN, 1925-2000

Mario Giacomelli is an icon of postwar Italian photography, known for his black-and-white photographs that poetically capture the landscapes, street scenes, and daily life of his hometown Senigallia, on Italy’s Adriatic coast. His work drew an avid following both during his lifetime and after his death. In 1960, he received a commission from the Catholic Church to record the lives of young priests in seminaries, and in 1978 he was featured in the Venice Biennale. A major exhibition of his work at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is scheduled for 2021. A self-taught photographer, Giacomelli purchased his first camera in the early 1950s and soon became preoccupied with documenting the world around him in a style inspired by the neorealist cinema of the day. For almost 50 years, he turned his camera on local life in Senigallia, photographing the residents of the home for the elderly where his mother worked and local farmers in Italy’s Marche region through a lens both gritty and deeply personal.