Basilico before Basilico

In Verona, the exhibition curated by Giovanna Calvenzi presents 29 vintage photos by Gabriele Basilico from a unique series of gelatin silver photos, printed by Basilico himself.

In the summer of 1970, when he had still not decided which direction his life was to take, Gabriele Basilico undertook a long car journey to Iran, together with a group of friends.

He had two cameras with him, and his idea was to make a reportage of his journey with the hope of then selling it to some newspaper. His visual reference points were the great photographers of the Magnum agency, and the tradition of photojournalism. Even with the distance inherent in the images of Iran in comparison with the style he was to develop in later years, in these images Basilico implicitly declares his fascination with the geometry of buildings. City life and architectural space alternate in his photographs, and Iran 1970 remains, as Luca Doninelli has written, an important essay on Basilico-before-Basilico.

Basilico’s is an anthropological view of the state of mind of men sitting on stones rather than of the children at play, but it is also an attentive compositional view that was first experimented with in the petrified cones of Cappadocia, the ruins of Persepolis, and the mosques of Isfahan. This was an experience that reinforced the relationship between the artist and the camera lens, a journey that contributed later on to his becoming the photographer of urban outskirts, the world’s cities, coastal towns, Brazilian skyscrapers, and of Asiatic megalopolises.

Gabriele Basilico, Turkey – Iran 1970, vintage print, gelatin silver print, 30 x 40 cm. Courtesy of Studio la Città – Verona

Gabriele Basilico, photo of the series Iran 1970. Courtesy of Studio la Città – Verona

Gabriele Basilico, Border Turkey/Iran – Iran 1970, vintage print, gelatin silver print, 30 x 40 cm. Courtesy of Studio la Città – Verona

5 March – 7 May 2016
Iran 1970 – Basilico prima di Basilico
Curator: Giovanna Calvenzi
Studio la Città
Lungadige Galtarossa 21, Verona

Basilico before Basilico

In Verona, the exhibition curated by Giovanna Calvenzi presents 29 vintage photos by Gabriele Basilico from a unique series of gelatin silver photos, printed by Basilico himself.

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