The world of Friulian culture is in mourning: Walter Liva, creator and historical coordinator of Craf, the Center for Research and Archiving of Photography in Spilimbergo, died suddenly at the age of 70 (he had turned them on 23 October last).
Spilimberghese doc, born in 1952, after studying agriculture at the Paolino d’Aquileia high school in Cividale del Friuli and starting his career as a trade unionist, he is due back in 1987, with the involvement of Ises (Institute for Development economic area of Spilimberghese), the “Spilimbergo Fotografia” project for the enhancement of the existing cultural heritage and the recovery of a strong local identity, using the “fortunate” artistic heritage of the Friulian Group for a New Photography, born in Spilimbergo in the 1950s, and composed by Aldo Beltrame, Carlo Bevilacqua, Gianni and Giuliano Borghesan, Toni del Tin, Fulvio Roiter and Italo Zannier. It is precisely from the neorealist experience of the Friulian Group for a New Photography that “Friuli Fotografia” was born, which, in 1989, became “Spilimbergo Fotografia”, a designation that later identifies the leading exhibition of Craf.
During the first years of activity, between 1987 and 1993, numerous conferences, workshops, post-diploma courses help to consolidate the “Spilimbergo – Photography” liaison. “To Walter Liva we owe, in those memorable years, the review” Andar per Mostre “, three hundred exhibitions of young photographers from Friuli and beyond the Alps, the organization and direction of courses and workshops and laboratories for over 4 thousand students from all over the world “as recalled by his friend Gianfranco Ellero, intellectual and leading exponent of the Friulian world” and, in 1992, at the National Convention of Prato on Archives and Photo Libraries, Professor Fabrizio Cementano of UCLA defined him as a ” voice of hope for Italian photography “”.
In 1997 Liva was director and curator for the Solomon R. Guggehnheim Museum in New York of the project “Learning with Photography – a cultural exchange” for primary school children in New York and Friuli.
He also recovered many photographic archives: among these, in collaboration with Cornell Capa, the unpublished works by André Ketesz made in Gorizia at the dawn of the First World War, which were believed to be lost. From the University of Bern he bought the reproductions of the photographs taken in Friuli and Istria by Paul Scheuermerie in 1922, thus opening Craf to the photography of linguists. Also important was the recovery of the photographic archive of the writer Giovanni Guareschi, cataloged by the Emilia Romagna Region, not to mention the photographic archive of the Bauhaus.
Between 1987 and 2008, Liva conceived and created over 400 “major exhibitions”, between Prague, Buenos Aires, Japan, Orleans, New York, St. Petersburg and Moscow, just to name a few and some absolute “world premieres” such as the exhibitions Lakota Sioux, Fashion photography in the Thirties in Berlin or that of the Archives of the Italian Army of the First World War.
Between 1994 and 2000 he conceived and created a series of photographic campaigns on the Friuli Venezia Giulia region and on individual cities, involving illustrious Italian and foreign photographers. He also participated in the design and creation of over seventy books and catalogs and obtained the assignment of several important archives for Craf.
So after a long and successful career, in October 2019 reaching retirement age. The date of the funeral will be known in the next few hours.