‘Aorta’, a retrospective exhibition of the American photographer Mark Lyon (La Jolla, 1952), will open on May 16 and run until June 12 at the Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Letizia Battaglia in Palermo.
Born in California and based in France for the past twenty-five years, Mark Lyon has been working across the field of photography for over forty years, ranging from portraits to architecture, from landscapes to the visual arts, and into areas linked to music and literature. His work has resulted in some thirty series, as well as numerous publications and editions, and his works feature in the permanent collections of institutions such as the FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, as well as in international private collections.
Aorta is the photographer’s first solo exhibition in Italy, following his passionate exploration and documentation of the country.
On display, over fifty images trace a journey through places, eras and stories. At the heart of this dialogue lies a more recent series by the photographer: the portraits taken at the Casa della fanciulla in Santa Ninfa (TP) between 2013 and 2025. The artist discovered this place thanks to Paolo Martino, his neighbour in New York, whose father had founded it.
Presented as medium-format diptychs, these images recount the metamorphosis between two stages of life. In 2013, Lyon photographed some children for the first time in 24x36mm format. The subjects are portrayed against a neutral background, evoking the blank page of childhood, waiting to be written upon. Twelve years later, the photographer reunites with those same children, now teenagers, and took new portraits, this time using a view camera. They led him to the places they frequented, love and he chose to capture this moment in their lives. The images thus connect a continuous and rediscovered time, giving shape to the multiplicity of identities. In Mark Lyon’s work, photography becomes a place of encounter and metamorphosis.
In dialogue with this series, the exhibition brings together images taken over a period of forty years in France, the United States and Italy. From 1990s New York, where he portrays leading figures in photography and cinema such as Bob Richardson, Richard Prince, Winston & William Eggleston, and producer Franco Rossellini; to pairs of twins photographed at various times at the Twins Days festival in Twinsburg. These are mainly portraits, often presented in large format, in which color conveys the intensity of a world that captures the photographer’s gaze. Through both digital and analogue prints, the profound intimacy of Mark Lyon’s work emerges, telling the story of identity as a simple narrative. The subjects photographed, sometimes doubled as in the portraits of twins, inhabit a world that is both ancient and contemporary.
Mark Lyon is an American photographer, born in La Jolla, California, in 1952. He has lived and worked in France for over twenty-five years.
He moved to France at the age of 16 and discovered photography there using his father’s Rolleiflex. In 1970, having returned to the United States, he continued his studies in literature and photography at Bennington, in Vermont. He developed a passion for the literary and artistic avant-garde. Following this immersion in the medium of photography, he decided to pursue a Master’s degree in photography at Yale. He subsequently taught photography at Columbia University and at ENSAPC.
Trained by Richard Avedon, he constantly intertwines personal research with commissioned work. Encouraged by Bob Richardson, with whom he collaborated on editorial projects, he returned to Europe in 1997 and decided to settle in France.
Since then, he has produced numerous photographic series on an international scale and published several monographs. His first book, PURE, published in 2004, chronicles the adolescence of his neighbour, Raina, in New York. Le Collectionneur, a retrospective exhibition at the Zervos Foundation in Vézelay in 2008, was accompanied by a volume of the same name. He subsequently published Fantasma de Carne (2012), whose images were taken in Quito, Ecuador, in dialogue with a text by Christine Montalbetti. Les Jardins de la Pirotterie, published in 2016, explores the theme of architectural innovation in social housing in France and was the subject of an exhibition at ENSA in Nantes.
Winner of the Fondation des Treilles Photography Prize in 2013, Mark Lyon discovered the landscapes and contemporary issues of the Mediterranean basin on that occasion, returning to the region in 2017 to launch the FREE CONTACTS project. This project of colour portraits of people in exile in Italy received support for documentary photography from the CNAP in 2021, before being exhibited in 2022 at the La Mauvaise Réputation gallery in Bordeaux.
Encounters play an essential role in his journey, guided by happy coincidences that have led him in particular to Italy, a country he has long loved. In 2013, a trip organised by a New York neighbour, Paolo Martino, led him to discover Santa Ninfa. Here he began a series of portraits of children, whom he met again twelve years later during their adolescence, thus placing the Casa della fanciulla project within an extended temporal dimension.
His work features in the permanent collections of institutions such as the FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, as well as in international private collections. Today he is exhibiting in Italy for the first time, having passionately explored and photographed the country.
The versatility of Mark Lyon’s photographic practice leaves no emotion untouched. From the graceful poise of a swan to the fervour of a concert at the Bataclan, his images capture the urgency of the present moment. Photography thus proves capable of creating a tension between the immediacy of the gaze and the resonance of meaning.
The exhibition is curated by Mark Lyon and Ugo Casubolo Ferro and is accompanied by a text by Carla Floccari and it is supported by Institut français Palermo and Department of Culture of the City of Palermo.
Aorta is open to the public at the International Centre of Photography in Palermo every day from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm.
Palermo : Mark Lyon : Aorta
May 16 – June 12, 2026
Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Letizia Battaglia
Via Paolo Gili, 4
90138 Palermo PA, Italy
