The Lumiere Brothers Photogallery Displays Italian Neorealism Photography

Written by Benito Castrogiovanni Wednesday, 18 January 2012 00:28

Moscow.- The Lumiere Brothers Photogallery in Moscow is proud to present "Italian Neorealism in Photography" on view from January 17th through January 26th. The new project of the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography is a unique possibility to plunge into the world of the Italian Neorealism, the unique cultural phenomenon which arose in the 1940s. Its creative principles were formulated by the playwright and film critic Zavattini. During these austere post-war years for Italy he urged not to be distracted by a romantic plot and happy-endings, but to pay attention to the real destinies of simple people, unemployment and the contrast between poverty and riches. The main features were the documentary nature, ordinariness, denial of decoration and studio shootings. Neorealists acted as chroniclers, telling about the tragedy of their people, who had endured fascism and defeat in the war.

The tendency of neorealism was taken up by photographers. In 1946 Luigi Crocenzi published his earliest photo-stories “Italia Senza Tempo” and “Occhio Su Milano”. For Crocenzi it was important to create a story with the help of photographic images - “a still movie on printed paper”. In 1951 Crocenzi published the picture story “Nei vicoli del mio quartiere” with a text by the poet Nanni Selva, a quote from which is in the epigraph. On December 1st 1955 the Friuli Group for a New Photography (GFNF) was organized. Its participants were amongst the most significant Italian photographers of the second half of the 20th century: the brothers Gianni and Giuliano Borghesan, Italo Zannier, Aldo Beltrame, Carlo Bevilacqua, Toni Del Tin, Fulvio Roiter and later Giuseppe Bruno, Nino Migliori, Luciano Ferri and Gianni Berengo Gardin. The members of the group intended to reflect contemporary history through photography, which poetically documented the world around. In 1961 Luigi Crocenzi supervised Mario Giacomelli’s exhibition “Un Uomo, Una Donna, Un Amore”: the great photographer who completely changed the point of view of Neorealism by introducing a new tonal poetry in the image (similar to what Federico Fellini began to do in the cinema) and created his photo-stories without any superfluous details. In 1963 and 1964 Crocenzi cooperated with Alvaro Valentini, Toni Nicolini and Piero Berengo Gardin in producing photographic scenarios for RAI, the national television station: poetry by the great poets was dramatized with sequences of photographs. While an offstage voice recited the texts, a television camera would slide over the images. This was an attempt to create a relationship between an image and a literary text. Photo-stories made by Luigi Crocenzi, works by the Friuli Group for a New Photography, shots by Mario Giacomelli that represent the complete story, created by the imagination of the photographer are among the main objects of the exhibition "Photography and Neorealism in Italy 1945 – 1965”. The exhibition was being prepared for almost a year, and before this exhibition many of the artists had never been shown in Russia. The project has already been exhibited in France, Italy, and USA and can now be seen in Moscow. The exhibition was created by the Italian Center of Research and Archiviation of Photography (CRAF), the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and includes 127 works.

The Lumiere Brothers Photogallery was founded in 2001 in Moscow and became the first private gallery in Russia devoted exclusively to fine art photography. It specializes in 20th century soviet photography, photo-journalism and fashion, in addition to representing works by Russian contemporary artists such as Vadim Gushchin and Vladimir Shakhlevich. The gallery works with the estates of Boris Ignatovich, Yakov Khalip, Alexander Greenberg, and Alexander Ustinov and is the exclusive representative for Lev Borodulin, Vladimir Lagrange and Naum Granovskiy. Located in a well-known exhibition space — the Central House of Artists - where the Vladimir Musaeljan prominent art events are held including Art Moscow and the Russian Antique Salons, the gallery actively exhibits and promotes the best pieces of photography on the Russian art market. The Gallery holds approximately nine exhibitions per year. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.lumiere.ru/

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