He purchased his first camera in 1953 and quickly gained recognition for the raw expressiveness of his images. His preference for grainy film and high-contrast paper allowed him to produce his trademark bold, geometric compositions, with glowing whites and deep blacks. Marche and its people, seascapes, and landscapes served as the primary inspiration for his work. His art was not self-contained and separate—he often spent years expanding and reimagining one body of work or repurposing images for inclusion in a different series. Giacomelli gave his photographs titles derived from poetry and literature, further transforming these works into meditations on time, memory, and existence.
Mario Giacomelli: Figure/Ground (Getty Publications, $24.95) covers the photographer’s earliest pictures to those made in the final years of his life. This publication celebrates the J. Paul Getty Museum’s extensive Giacomelli holdings, formed in large part through a significant gift from Susan Steinhauser and her late husband, Daniel Greenberg.
Also featured are interviews with the Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser and with the American photographer Stephan Brigidi, who met Giacomelli in 1975 and, over the course of the next decade, became the exclusive representative of Giacomelli’s work in America. The book’s afterword is by Katiuscia Biondi Giacomelli, the photographer’s granddaughter and director of the Archivio Mario Giacomelli.
