Vision is the first photographic exhibition in Italy by photographer Francis Giacobetti. Over 100 large black and white portraits, alongside color irises, of the visionaries of the twentieth century
For the first time in Italy, from November 17 to January 14, 2024, it will be possible to admire, in the renovated spaces of the Procuratie Vecchie in St. Mark’s Square, the latest project by the great French photographer Francis Giacobetti, curated by Thomas Sorrentino.
Over 100 images, black and white portraits and colored irises of 20th-century visionaries: artists, scientists, rulers, peacemakers or, as Giacobetti defines them: Contemporary Universal Treasures. Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Stephen Hawking, Mikhail Gorbachev, Barack Obama, Rita Levi Montalcini, just to mention some of the women and men who have most inspired our era with their ideas, discoveries, ideals, and values.
The exhibition is divided into 15 sections on the second floor of the Procuratie Vecchie, covering nearly one thousand square meters of exhibition space: gigantic images accompanied by captions and quotes that explain the life and impact each figure has had on our daily lives.
The goal is to see through the eyes of those who realized their vision, allowing the visitor to immerse themselves in the visionary’s profound world, entering the flow of reflections and meditations that can emerge from the exhibition path.
What do our eyes say about us?
Francis Giacobetti has spent his life in a quest to anatomize, in the smallest detail, famous figures and their body parts. The eyes, they say, are the windows to the soul. “It is said that at 50 we have the face we deserve, unless, like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, we possess a macabre portrait hidden in the attic that bears the wrinkles denied by the face we show to the world downstairs,” the French photographer recalls.
A praise to gods and heroes
The subjects he has photographed, coming from all parts of the world, have one thing in common: each looks deeply into their own subject matter with formidable intelligence and great passion. No one could ever be accused of superficiality.
“Thirty years of my life for a dialogue with the horizon – states Francis Giacobetti – Darwin, Mozart, Michelangelo, Marie Curie are identical to Crick and Watson who discovered DNA, to Francis Bacon, Kurosawa and all the others who honor these pages. It was a privilege to meet them, to plant a mimosa tree in Cuba with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to be a guest of the Dalai Lama in his home in Dharamsala, to visit Rome with Federico Fellini among many other moments. Without the two hundred women and men of this project, if they had never existed, we would still be in the Stone Age and searching for fire. Considering that there are more atoms in a drop of water than stars in the universe, how lucky I am to mingle with angels! This exhibition is a song, a poem to praise gods and heroes. I was asked: “Are they really their eyes?”. The answer is “yes”. A black and white portrait, a colored iris, planets. The light of men. ”
So how does he do it?
“I invented my own device for photographing eyes,” says Giacobetti, on the phone from his Paris studio. “It is a small secret, but what it does, more or less, is shine light at the sides of the eyes rather than directly into them. In this way, we can see the pattern of the eyes in relief, which is not possible if you illuminate them directly with light. Of course, this is not an optical instrument. My images have nothing to do with science, medicine, or anatomy; my interest is only in their beauty. ”
The visionaries are portrayed in black and white alongside the color photo of their iris. “Our eye is made of the same material as the sun. It was shaped by the sun, and that is why we see. The atom in the star speaks to the atom in the eye, using the language of light” (Adouze, Cassé, Carrière, Conversations on the Invisible, Paris, P. Belfond, 1988).
VISION. Master Minds of our Time by Francis Giacobetti
The exhibition will be in Venice on the second floor of the Procuratie Vecchie in St. Mark’s Square from November 18, 2023, to January 14, 2024. It will then take its message of peace around the world for 5 years, starting from Paris in 2024.
The exhibition is organized by Baluze and Encore Productions in collaboration with Civita Mostre e Musei.
A catalog published by Iris Galerie accompanies the exhibition.
Opening Hours
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10 AM to 6 PM. Closed on Tuesdays.
The ticket office closes at 5:30 PM.
During the Christmas holidays
On December 24 and 31, closing is brought forward to 4:30 PM. Closed on December 25 and 26.
Tickets
Full price €15. Reduced price €12 for groups of up to 25 participants, over 65s, and students under 25.
Free for children under 6, tour guides, journalists with an ODG card, disabled persons, and ICOM members.
Booking fee: €1.50 per person.
For information, please write to serviziculturali@civita.art.
Biography of the photographer
Francis Giacobetti is considered one of the most revolutionary photographers of all time and is primarily known for his images of female nudes and portraits of numerous celebrities including Brigitte Bardot, Jane Birkin, Grace Jones, and Francis Bacon.
He was born in Marseille in 1939 and is entirely self-taught. He took his first photograph at the start of the Monte Carlo Rally when he was only 12 years old. Giacobetti grew up amidst the oppressive austerity of post-war France and remembers spending his teenage years wandering the streets of Paris with his friend Jean-Paul Goude. Soon the long-awaited awakening for these young photographers hit with full force, as the 1960s brought with them the liberal boom that encouraged freedom of expression, paving the way for Giacobetti’s career. He has worked for a wide range of publications, including Life, Look, Paris Match, and Lui.
Giacobetti’s true mastery lies in the control of light. His innate ability to use it to frame, highlight, and illuminate skin is exceptional, whether under the scorching sun on a beach in the Bahamas or within the confines of a closed studio. His experimental techniques call to mind early surrealist photograms, using colored light sources to magnify the contours of the body, the results of which have served as inspiration for a new generation of photographers. This self-taught artist’s unconventional approach to technique, light, and shadow has earned him covers in multiple images and formats, and has elevated Giacobetti’s name to the pantheon of photography greats.
Thirty years ago, a cult book published by Phaidon Press Limited caused a sensation in the world of photography. Techniques of the World’s Great Photographers included Francis Giacobetti in the small circle of the forty greatest photographers in the world since the birth of photography, those whose style is immediately recognizable. Daguerre, Henry Fox Talbot, Nadar, Roger Fenton, Lewis Carroll, Eadweard Muybridge, Alfred Stieglitz, Atget, Baron de Meyer, Edward Steichen, August Sander, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Weegee, Man Ray, Kertész, Blumenfeld, Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Bill Brandt, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Irving Penn, Joel Meyerovitz, and Francis Giacobetti.
In theory, these photographers have nothing in common, except for the fact that they are inventors of images: “To fix a moment of life to enclose it in an image“. And what a wonderful way to live, observing women, men, and children moving within a small rectangle.
In 1992 at the Grand Palais for the Salon des Artistes Français, created by Colbert in 1663 according to the wish of King Louis XIV, Francis Giacobetti shared the stage with Camille Claudel for sculpture, Edouard Detaille for painting, Dunoyer de Segonzac for engraving, and Roland Schweitzer for architecture.
In 1993 he was chosen by the building department of the Grand Louvre, along with artists César, Buren, and Jean-Pierre Reynaud to introduce contemporary art into the museum of museums. Twenty-four of his works still hang in the former office of the Ministry of Finance, in the Richelieu wing of the Louvre.
1994 is the year of Francis Bacon by Francis Giacobetti with a monumental exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in London, which saw a total of 200 photographs published in Independent Magazine and Art Newspaper. Subsequently, another exhibition on Francis Bacon was held at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Finally, in 2008, Francis Bacon by Francis Giacobetti was presented at the Kings Place Gallery in London.
Cover image: iris of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Photo by Francis Giacobetti.
Exhibition press kit: https://bit.ly/3FRRvRS.
