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“The eyes are the mirror of the soul”. It seems like the usual cliché, yet in front of an exhibition like this one could change one’s mind.
“Vision. Masters Minds of our Time” is the latest project by Frances Giacobetti, a great French photographer now eighty-five years old. It is composed of one hundred black and white portraits of the most “visionary” figures of the twentieth century (chosen from the 200 that Giacobetti created between 1986 and 2000) displayed alongside color photos of their irises: artists, scientists, writers , politicians, doctors, Nobel Prize winners, “contemporary Universal Treasures” – as the photographer himself defined them – “characters who if they had never existed, we would still be in the Stone Age and in search of fire”.
Frances Giacobetti at the Procuratie Vecchie in Piazza San Marco
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Procuratie Vecchie
The first stage of this truly particular exhibition, curated by Thomas Sorrentino, is held in Venice, in the exhibition spaces of the Procuratie Vecchie recently reopened to the public after a long restoration: from 18 November 2023 to 15 January 2024 it is possible to visit it, on the second floor of the large building which directly overlooks Piazza San Marco. The exhibition project is destined to become itinerant and will subsequently travel the world for five years, starting in Paris in 2024.
A special device Francis Giacobetti undertook this very personal research more than thirty years ago, when photos of the iris as a work of art were not as fashionable as they are today. To succeed in his aim, he himself invented a device capable of shining light at the sides of the eyes rather than directly into them. In this way it was possible for him to capture the relief design of his interlocutors’ eyes.
Ray Charles
Ray Charles and the other protagonists The subjects chosen to give life to “Vision. Masters Minds of our Time” are all “visionary” characters of the last century, who have left their mark on the world through their ideas, their professionalism, talent, discoveries, ideals, values.
Excellent minds who showed their most intimate side in front of Francis Giacobetti’s inseparable Leica: from Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama, from Aung San Suu Kyi to Bob Wilson, Pavarotti and Stephen Hawking, Gorbachev and Buzz Aldrin, Barack Obama and Francis Crick, Rita Levi Montalcini, Antonioni, Frances Bacon… A smiling Ray Charles is also portrayed, and his dark irises look like a photo of a solar eclipse. Intense yet relaxed portraits, characters that the French photographer was able to involve in an intimate conversation with the lens, “visionaries” with whom Giacobetti managed to become close, who met them for just five minutes – as in the case of Woody Allen – or with whom he spent entire days – as happened with Fidel Castro.