Giacomelli: The Interior Shape

by Mario Giacomelli (Photographer), Jean-Claude Lemagny, Enzo Carli

Essays by Enzo Carli, Jean Claude Lemagny.

248 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2001

About the author

Mario Giacomelli was an Italian self-taught photographer. At 13, he left high school, began working as a typesetter and spent his weekends painting. After the horrors of World War II, he turned to the more immediate medium of photography. He wandered the streets and fields of post-war Italy, inspired by the gritty Neo-Realist films of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, and influenced by the renewed Italian photographer Giuseppe Cavalli, and developed a style characterized by bold, stylized compositions and stark contrasts.
Giacomelli's most successful series, I Pretini (Little Priets) (1957), a poetic transcription of the everyday life of a group of young priests, resulted from documenting Post-War Italian seminaries.