Among the great artists of Italian and international photography as a master of landscape and realism, Giovanni Chiaramonte died today, at the age of 75, after a long illness, on the same day in which, at the Adi Design Museum in Milan, he would have inaugurated «Fotografia alla career. Homage of Italian photography to the masters of the Compasso d’Oro”, an exhibition curated by himself with Michele Nastasi.
Professor of history and theory of photography at the Iulm University of Milan and at the Faculty of Architecture of Palermo, in 1977 Chiaromonte founded the editorial cooperative Punto e Virgola together with Luigi Ghirri, with whom he would share many projects, such as the legendary «Viaggio in Italy”. In addition to an intense exhibition activity, Chiaromonte directed the photographic series for Jaca Book from 1980 to 1989. In 1990 he founded the photography series of Federico Motta Editore, which he directed until 1993. In 1994 he founded and directed the photography series of the Sei of Turin. In 2002 he created the photography series of Edizioni della Meridiana of Florence and in 2007 that of Itaca/Ultreya. Born in Varese in 1948 to Sicilian parents originally from Gela, Chiaramonte moved to Milan in 1961 where he completed his philosophical studies and approached cinema and photography; he began photographing at the end of the ’60s in the wake of the revival of the figurative form, after the great abstract and informal season of certain trends in Pop Art and Conceptual Art.
In 1974 Chiaromonte exhibited the works «Sequenza nel tempo» and «Dov’è la nostra terra» at the Galleria Il Diaframma of Lanfranco Colombo; also from that year is «Christmas Speech», a series of sequential shots of Paul VI’s speech broadcast by Rai. In the following two years he deepened his theological studies, approached American photography and the work of Ugo Mulas; in 1977 he founded the Punto e Virgola publishing house with Luigi Ghirri (with whom he would later share many descriptive undertakings of the Italian landscape) and others. In the early 1980s he began his production of essays and his activity as a curator, with the exhibitions «Italy. A country shaped by man” and “Contemporary Spanish photographers”. In 1984 he was among the photographers involved by Luigi Ghirri in the «Viaggio in Italia» enterprise, and two years later in «Explorazioni sulla via Emilia»; between 1984 and 1988 he completed the work «Land of return». The volume “Through the plain” was released in 2005, which collects images taken since 1987 and dedicated to the theme of the Po Valley area crossed by motorways. Already from his first research on the Italian landscape, Chiaramonte’s work manifests itself as a personal sequence of images in which the photographs, although individually significant, acquire an extraordinary narrative force as a whole.
After the exhibition and the volume «Contemporary European Photography», in which he presented the most important authors of his generation in 1983, he first dedicated himself to the relationship between place and man’s identity with the volumes «Gardens and landscapes» (1983), and «Peninsula of figures» (1993). She then addresses the essential drama of the roots and destiny of the West in «Land of Return» (1989), and in «Westwards» (1996). An elegy and a return journey to the places of the Mediterranean is «At the edge of the sea» (1999). The Communication Study Center and Archive of Parma contains 517 photographic prints by Chiaromonte, works representative of the artist’s entire span of activity. In 2000, with the poets and writers Maurizio Cucchi, Milo De Angelis, Luca Doninelli, Umberto Fiori, Giovanni Raboni, Davide Rondoni he exhibited the work «Milano. Circles of the middle city.” On the occasion of the restoration of the façade of the Scala he created the artist’s volume «In corso d’opera». Among his other volumes «Fragments from the Rocca. Cefalù”, “Sweet is the light”, “Inhabiting the world: Europe”, “Berlin. Figures», «Across the plain», «Without mouth». In 2010 he was present at the Shanghai Expo with «Hidden in perspective».