Disappearing Italy in the pictures of the iconic photographer Gianni Berengo Gardin

Gianni Berengo Gardin is one of the legendary Italian photographers, for more than half a century he has been capturing beautiful moments of the life of his homeland with the lens of his camera. He is an ardent adherent of traditional film photography, believing that only it can convey the elusive moment of real life. 

Gianni Berengo Gardin's works capture the fleeting charm of the urban landscapes of Rome and Venice.

His black-and-white photographs show life itself, changeable and impermanent. The photographer longingly recalls the past, nostalgic for the times when his favorite cities were not yet crowded with tourists, and you could find quiet places to hide from the hustle and bustle.

Women in black with geese. one thousand nine hundred seventy nine

To date, the 88-year-old Gardin has already published more than 250 books and is still working. With the camera at the ready, he travels to his favorite places to find new subjects for his photo stories.

The picture was taken at the Exhibition Palace in Rome, 1965

Speaking about modernity, Gardin always emphasizes that now it is difficult to find the romance inherent in the Venetian streets half a century ago.

The picture was taken on the Lido Islands, Venice, 1958

Gardin was born in Genoa in 1930. He moved to Venice after the war, and photography was just a hobby for him for a long time. One day, his uncle gave him an illustrated edition of the American photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lang, and then Gianni realized the unlimited possibilities of the camera.

The picture was taken in St. Mark's Square, Venice, 1959

Gardin is known for his diverse pictures: here he takes pictures of patients in a psychiatric hospital, here in his picture young people dancing on the beach to the sounds of a gramophone, here are the workers of the Olivetti factory. 

The picture was taken in Spezia, 2005

Gianni Gardin is against any distortion of the image, he compares photos processed in Photoshop with a special kind of fraud. He calls himself a real photographer and an apologist for dying art. In the total age of smartphones, it remains true to the traditional camera and time-tested shooting methods.

In the vaporetto, 1960

The picture was taken in Venice, 1958

In St. Mark's Square, 1960

Normandy, 1933

Scene at the sea, Catania, 2001

Genoa, 2002

Portrait of the photographer Gianni Berengo Gardin