In Milan, the exhibition “Gabriele Basilico. My cities”

The choice, interesting because it guides the visitor by actually inviting him to slice through the city from Sempione Park to near Piazza Duomo, is due to the fact that Basilico, as is known even to the less passionate and expert in the field, was strongly linked to the city of Milan: point of departure and return, place of experimentation, contaminated and contaminating all his investigative work, which at a certain point became 'a port of the sea'.

Precisely from here, observing the photograph which has Milan as its object, one can start to immerse oneself in the journey to discover clear hints of'what has been' and places in where you have the feeling that something could happen: two qualities that always return in Basilico's photography.

The project is curated by Giovanna Calvenzi, head of the Gabriele Basilico Archive, supported by Matteo Balduzzi for the part of the exhibition that takes place in the Triennale Milano, and by Filippo Maggia regarding Palazzo Reale.

“Gabriele Basilico. My cities": what changes from La Triennale to Palazzo Reale

Visiting the exhibition in its entirety is equivalent to organizing yourself between two different exhibition sites, but be careful, they are not equivalent. What differs is precisely the subject of the exhibition: at Palazzo Reale it is possible to walk among the photographs taken in cities all over the world, including Milan but not only; the setup is more devoted to an entertaining dimension, you can immerse yourself in Basilico's photography. In the Triennale the single and central object is Milan, also for this reason the set-up is drier, more essential. Here you can observe how Basilico's outlook has changed over the years, and at the same time how the city has changed.

The beauty of this exhibition is that everyone, even those who are new to photography, can appreciate it. It was exciting to see how different generations were observing the works on display: students and enthusiasts, young people looking for a detail to imprint in their minds, but also older people, 'the Milanese of the past', looking for , in this case, of a memory detail with the nose 1 millimeter from the photograph to be able to recognize 'my factory'.

“Gabriele Basilico. My cities": what changes from La Triennale to Palazzo Reale

Visiting the exhibition in its entirety is equivalent to organizing yourself between two different exhibition sites, but be careful, they are not equivalent. What differs is precisely the subject of the exhibition: at Palazzo Reale it is possible to walk among the photographs taken in cities all over the world, including Milan but not only; the setup is more devoted to an entertaining dimension, you can immerse yourself in Basilico's photography. In the Triennale the single and central object is Milan, also for this reason the set-up is drier, more essential. Here you can observe how Basilico's outlook has changed over the years, and at the same time how the city has changed.

The beauty of this exhibition is that everyone, even those who are new to photography, can appreciate it. It was exciting to see how different generations were observing the works on display: students and enthusiasts, young people looking for a detail to imprint in their minds, but also older people, 'the Milanese of the past', looking for , in this case , of a memory detail with the nose 1 millimeter from the photograph to be able to recognize 'my factory'.

The theme of industry, a 'self-determined mandate'

One wonders why there is such a preponderant presence of industry in Basilico's work: his giving voice and perspective to a phenomenon specific to the Sixties with the economic boom before and after de-industrialisation then, at first glance, suggests that the Milanese photographer had simply been trained with the myth of worker culture.

These were the years in which the revolution, and with it the student and worker culture, were emerging: the photography dedicated to the life of the factories allowed Basilico to abstract something that, inevitably, had to do with the politics.

He himself declared that he had been entrusted with a job done with "a social mandate that no one had ever given him": for him it was a social, self-determined assignment. Precursor of a policy that has come to recognize this need for many years to come.

“Gabriele Basilico. My cities": a 'human' evolution

Visiting the exhibition, one realizes how the Milanese photographer has let the presence of the human subject vanish within his photographs: despite this, it is difficult not to notice how his works are an ascending climax of 'humanization'.

The people, who in his very first work of social reportage dedicated to the youth movements of protest between '74 and '76 were the central object, slowly disappear to make room for spaces which - however - carry with them an important density of human presence.

Cities, industries, streets are: in his shots faces stop appearing, and the 'bodies' of urban space take over, that is, the driving part of society.</p >

In addition to photography

The exhibition at the Triennale concludes with two video contributions, one of documentation lasting approximately 20 minutes and one unpublished of an editorial nature which will soon be available and screened in a selected number of theaters in Italy, through which you can immerse yourself in the world of Gabriele Basilico.