There is an exhibition in Milan that allows you to follow, step by step, idea by idea, the dialogue and collaboration between two creatives for antonomasia: Aldo Fallai and Giorgio Armani. Nearly fifty years of uninterrupted artistic dialogue between them have produced iconic images and insights into an aesthetic that has permeated the collective imagination and revolutionised the standards of the time. Aldo Fallai per Giorgio Armani, 1977-2021 is on show at Armani/Silos. On the occasion, The Eye of Photography interviewed Aldo Fallai.
How did you manage to capture Giorgio Armani’s style revolution photographically?
I think that among one of the most emblematic images of Armani’s stylistic revolution is the photo of Antonia dell’Atte holding up some newspapers, the International Herald Tribune, the Corriere della Sera. It is a photograph that testifies to the strong impact that Armani’s fashion has had on reality, that is to say, the liberation of woman from a cage and the softening of man. Visually I think I interpreted this translation by downplaying certain situations, making the woman less sexy and more curious and the man less rigid and more relaxed.
Which elements made your images different and innovative?
At the time they were innovative because they were natural photographs. They are pictures that show situations you would like to see, there are never exaggerated or sensational scenes. They are fragments of everyday life, snippets of life, simple gestures like crossing the street or sheltering from the rain with an umbrella. There is a lot of spontaneity.
How much has knowing and loving art influenced your style?
I am a Florentine so it is inevitable that art has influenced me a great deal, especially the Italian art of the late 16th century, which places man at the centre of every situation, and from which I derive my use of the medium shot. In Florence, you can breathe art everywhere. Personally, when I can, I still go to the Uffizi.
I have always been attracted to art, when I was young I often went to art history lectures and I was particularly fascinated by Pietro Longhi and Caravaggio. Then I remember wonderful conversations with art critics like Bernard Berenson or Federico Zeri, who wrote the preface for my book Almost One Year, two wonderful pages. I had portrayed him sometime before and he liked the photos, taken in complete freedom. After a month, he wrote to invite me to Rome, to his house, where we talked for five hours. Talking to him in his house full of books was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.
How influential were the social changes of the time, when women became newly aware and styled and men left behind the classic suit for a new elegance?
I think it was a reciprocal phenomenon. Certainly, the historical moment had an impact, but Armani was a protagonist, helping to define a new concept of elegance for both men and women.
Which campaign or image do you think best represents the understanding between your creativity and Giorgio Armani’s?
I have already talked about the campaign with Antonia dell’Atte, who played a new woman taking her place in society. That was a breakthrough moment. At that point, the message somehow changed, and the woman became sweeter, more feminine again. The perfect interpreter of this new attitude was Gina di Bernardo, with her grace and almost haughty beauty. It is a completely different image, but one that stands out for its discretion and elegant sophistication. Let’s not forget that in those days trade magazines were volumes of over 700 pages and you had to stand out. In this context, for example, Armani chose black and white when everyone else was using colour, a courageous choice that turned out to be winning.
Why did you start taking photographs?
After my studies I opened a studio with some friends from school, we mainly did graphics and layouts, so indirectly also fashion. Then almost as a joke I tried taking pictures of clothes being worn. I liked it a lot, especially because it was very fast. One day we would shoot, the next day the photos would be approved and the day after that they would be gone.
One of the first jobs was for the lines that Giorgio Armani was designing before he even started his own brand. We met at a party and started talking almost immediately. He was nice and knowledgeable. We chatted about this and that, we talked about work, he told me he had a five or six-page spread for an advertisement in Vogue and asked me if I knew a good photographer in Florence.
I decided to take part and in two days I equipped myself with cameras and various tools and learned as much as I could about photography, for example how to make a background and – before that – what a background was. I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but I liked photos and I had a lot of fun: I found everything extremely fast and dynamic and I became passionate about this work.
And I have continued to do so because it allows you to look around with an attentive and curious gaze, always looking for something new to discover.
Getting back to the Aldo Fallai per Giorgio Armani, 1977-2021 exhibition, the advice is to ‘get lost’ among the two hundred and fifty shots that occupy two floors of the Armani/Silos following the flow of sensations, also suggested by the juxtaposition of images produced for different lines, like the photo with the tiger cub, taken in Palermo when the troupe took refuge at the Togni circus one rainy day, and the one with the career woman, impersonated by Antonia Dell’Atte, looking straight ahead into a bright future, in the middle of the crowd on Via Durini by the Armani office. And so on.
It was in the mid-1970s that the artistic partnership between Aldo Fallai and Giorgio Armani had its beginnings. At the time, Armani was a young freelance designer. Fallai, on the other hand, is a graphic designer with a passion for photography.
Aware of the social changes taking place, with women gaining power and men dressing more consciously, Giorgio Armani is determined to rewrite the rules for dressing and create a new lifestyle. Fallai assists him in defining an imagery, in which cinematographic echoes and neo-realist hints merge with references of late Renaissance and Mannerist painting in a mise-en-scène that is reminiscent of life.
“Working with Aldo allowed me from the very beginning to transform the vision I had in my mind into real images: to communicate that my clothes were not just made in a certain way with certain colours and materials, but that they represented a way of life. Because style, for me, is a total form of expression. Together, with a constant fluid and concrete dialogue, we created scenes of life, evoked atmospheres and sketched portraits full of character”, Giorgio Armani states.
Black and white leads to rarefaction and abstraction, so photographs yet pure invention, capture a real instant. They are somehow timeless. But the observer can somehow recognise himself in those scenes, which seem to be stills from a film.
All that remains is to see de visu the flow of these stills, which form a chronicle of continuous creativity.
The exhibition is curated by Giorgio Armani, Rosanna Armani and Leo Dell’Orco.
Paola Sammartano
Aldo Fallai Per Giorgio Armani, 1977- 2021
From December 5, 2023 to November 3, 2024
Armani/Silos
Via Bergognone 40
20144 Milano
Italy
https://www.armanisilos.com/
