Nelle città
From 11 June to 5 September 2021, the Magazzino delle Idee in Trieste will host the exhibition Nelle città di Gabriele Basilico curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Filippo Maggia, organised by Erpac, the regional authority for cultural heritage, in collaboration with the Archivio Gabriele Basilico in Milan and Skira Editore.
Gabriele Basilico
An undisputed master of contemporary photography, Gabriele Basilico has turned his interest and research to urban space and its transformations, discovering, in his countless travels, widespread analogies between the world’s cities. Correspondences found in borderline places as well as in historic centres, with mutations and architectural overlays stratified over time. Within his vast body of work reflecting on the modifications of urbanised territories in the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial era, the theme of the city as a complex and refined product of economy and history occupies a central place.
He himself wrote: ‘Photographing the city does not mean choosing the best architecture and isolating it from its context in order to enhance its aesthetic, compositional dimension, but for me it means exactly the opposite. That is, to put ‘cultured’ architecture and ‘ordinary’ architecture on the same level, to build a place of coexistence, because the real city, the city that I am interested in narrating, contains this mixture of excellence and mediocrity, of centre and periphery, even in the most recent recomposition of roles: a vision of urban space that, with a bit of rhetoric, we would once have called democratic’.
‘I like to think that I have learnt, as a photographer, to put myself aside, thus renouncing an overly subjective and often artificial representation in favour of a seemingly objective reproduction of reality and characterised by a great respect for things.’
Gabriele Basilico
(from Leggere le fotografie in dodici lezioni, Abitare-Rizzoli, Milano 2012)
© Archivio Gabriele Basilico
His work
Gabriele Basilico (Milan, 12 August 1944, Milan, 13 February 2013) began taking photographs at the end of the 1960s, mainly interested in social surveys.
After graduating in Architecture from Milan Polytechnic (1973), he devoted himself to photography with continuity. From 1978-1980 is his first major research project, Milan. Portraits of Factories. In 1991 he participated in a major project on the city of Beirut devastated by a fifteen-year civil war. In 1996 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Sezioni del paesaggio italiano, in collaboration with Stefano Boeri, and received the ‘Osella d’oro’ award for contemporary architectural photography. In 2000 he carried out a work on the Berlin metropolitan area. In 2003 he participated in the 5th Biennial of Architecture and Design in Sao Paulo with an exhibition in collaboration with Álvaro Siza.
In 2006, he presented a large retrospective at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. In 2007, he was invited to the LII Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale where he presented photographs from the Beirut 1991 series. Also in 2007, he realised a large photographic campaign on Silicon Valley commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2008, he carried out research on the city of Rome. He then expanded to the world’s great metropolises and in 2010-2011 worked on Istanbul, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro. In 2012, he participated in the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale with the Common Pavilion project.
His work is documented in more than one hundred monographs.
Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00-19.00
closed on Monday
The ticket office closes half an hour earlier
Tickets
Full 8,00€
Reduced 6,00€
65 years and over (with ID)
children from 11 to 18 years of age
students up to the age of 26 (with ID)
differently abled
Groups and children – children from 6 to 11 years of age 3,00€
Free of charge
– children up to 6 years of age
– accompanying persons of groups (1 per group)
– visiting teachers with pupils/students (2 per group)
– one accompanying person per disabled person
– ICOM membership card
– journalists with regular membership of the National Association
(professionals, trainees, publicists) in service
upon request of accreditation at: info@magazzinodelleidee.it
