Grazia Neri, also known as “la Signora della Fotografia”, is almost a legend for many professional and amateur photographers in Italy and foreigners abroad. Her name, after fighting for several years to defend copyright, was credited on hundreds of thousands of published images in Italy, and many people thought she was an incredible and unique photographer who was all over the world , covering conflicts or meeting actors on the red carpets, with ubiquitous power. No, Grazia Neri was the name of her photo agency (she had no time to think about a more creative and strategic name, she says), founded in Milan in 1966. Since then the agency grew from 3 to 40 employees, before the closing in 2009 during the recent editorial and advertising crisis.
Grazia Neri knew almost nothing about photography when she’s started her agent’s career. But later after working with photographers such as Paolo Pellegrin at the beginning of his brilliant career and other big names in photojournalism: James Nachtwey, Tim Hetherington, Annie Leibovitz, Lauren Greenfield, Donna Ferrato, Douglas Kirkland, Anthony Suau, David Burnett, Mary Ellen Mark and many othershe became a very good judgeof photography. Grazia Neri agency was also the main “hub” for the best and innovative photo agencies “imported” in Italy, such as Gamma, Sygma, Agence VU, VII, Noor, Contact Press Images and then Agence France-Presse, Camera Press, Panos Pictures or the exclusive syndication of Paris Match. The Italian editorial market for photography (even if apparently small was huge as content and budget for many years) almost a monopoly of the Grazia Neri agency’s for several years. She introduced a new kind of photojournalism from abroad, she imposed to magazines’ directors to credit the images (it is stills a hard job today!), she managed a photo gallery in the heart of Milan, she has been several times a World Press Photo jury’s member, she met and worked with the most influent photo editors and photo agency directors, she had seen the radical changement due the digital era, her ID photo is made by Douglas Kirkland, she defines herself as “control freak”. Today she has published a book “La Mia Fotografia (My Photography)”, Feltrinelli Editore 2013.
The book is about photography, of course. But she also declares her real love: literature from Arthur Rimbaud to Vladimir Nabokov. The reader will discover a biographical book ( World War II, the life with her mother, the necessity of a job, the female condition in Italy in the second half of the XX century and she has no problems in telling her mistakes), but “La Mia Fotografia” is also a book about the history of editorial markets and the world of photography from the past, today and what can be for the future.
To work with Grazia Neri has been a privilege for many employees and photographers (although it was sometimes difficult ! She was however the boss of a big company) and I would like to thank her for this interview and would like to wish her that book could be read in English soon.
In your book “La mia fotografia”, you talk often about education. No university after the World War II, absolutely no knowledge of photography at the beginning of your career. But you have educated many young photographers and photo editors (and then many magazines’ readers too) with your experience. What does it mean to teach how to see a photography?
It means to focus on the photograph’s message or its idea . To see a photograph you needs to be involved with it and be touched visually as well. Furthermore, you have to analyse the photograph and put in the right historical context, whatever your intentions are whether to love, hate or ignore that image. Whenever it is posssible, the truthfulness of the image has to always be confirmed. All these actions should happen just in few seconds nowadays, considering the overload of images in our daily life. It’s important to remember that what we see is what we are.
Literature and photography. Unexpectedly for whose who don’t know you well, you declare that you love literature more than photography. Your book has an interesting bibliography: Susan Sontag, Gisele Freund, A.D. Coleman, Fred Ritchin but also Rimbaud, Nabokov, Beckett, Calvino and many others. You hate those novel books with no portrait of the author too. Which books do you like because they directly related to photography?
All Nabokov novels. In all of them I see photos: they appear in my mind while I read.The same happens to me with Proust, expecially in “La prisonnière”.
The first print you purchased for your collection is an image of blind children who are playing with a white stuffed cat for learning how to pet a real one. The image was taken in 1981 by Jane Evelyn Atwood. Do you have any specific criteria for collecting photography?
I just fall in love with a photo. I had had many presents. For instance I bought a photo by Arthur Tress “Flood Dreams” in the 80s out of the joy to have it hanging on a wall in my apartment. And that pleasure is still there. Same with others.
The only criteria seems to love a photography. So which photos (or photographers) do you absolutely want to have and why? My sudden desire to get new photos , I would like the great photos of the 50s and 60s. But I do not buy any more. photographs.I am specially in love with some Alfred Eisenstaed portraits, with French photography from the end of the World War II and with Eugene Atget. I would like a photo of city by Lee Friedlander and many early Robert Doisneau. I adore to go through books of famous photographers.
You are known as “The Lady of Photojournalism”. A businesswoman and an influential person in the photography industry for many years in Italy and also abroad, was it helpful or not to be a woman who managed a photo agency?
In the work of an Agency it is necessary to be patient and precise in many infinite small details. Sometimes these qualities are more common in women. Women also are more humble to accept mistakes and take advantage to act differently in the future. This is less common in men. This said I never noticed differences in work when my interlocutor was a man or a woman.
The last words of the book are dedicated to your city, Milan. You describe it “poorer than in the 80s” and “with no new opportunities, passion and dreams” as well. But surely it has changed a lot for the photography’s world if you compare it to the city of several years ago (more galleries, more artists, more exhibitions). What does Milan (and Italy) need or has to do to save itself?
Milan should accept the criticism of our society (too spoilt, especially for young people), improve and change the education system, accept a period of austerity (for all). Do not build new buildings but restore all the abandoned ones. Create apartments for poor people. Young students of school age, starting from 11 years, should know what to work means visiting factories, farms, building yards, just for being more linked to the social and workday life. Save the parks, keep the city clean. Fight all the Mafias. Keep control on the banks.
Paris and New York have been really important for your career. In an apparently smaller world today and with Internet, they are still cities absolutely “photographic” (market, people, opportunities). But are they the only “Capitals of Photography”?
I do not know much about Middle East countries for example. Usually New York and London surprised me greatly in my travels as the best press photos (outside the trash newspapers of course). I used to buy the Independent when Colin Jacobson was the photo director because it had an intelligent use of photography (I do remember the frontpage photos, assigned!). But there is no more London like in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. Maybe New York has some still astonishing layout of photos in the web sections of the magazines and Paris has selected beautiful stories thanks to small but courageous agencies who are surviving the great crisis.
An emotional chapter in your book is dedicated to a list of your “Mistakes” both in your private and professional life. Can you tell us which mistakes must be avoided by photographers?
Avoid cliché, wonder if the photo has a real meaning before presenting it to a magazine or to a gallery. Live your life, especially when young in the middle of photography (exhibitions, festivals, conference and web where you have many contents for free). Learn about copyright laws. Be friend with other photographers: they could be the best critics of your pictures.Be Well-aware of a client you would like to visit to avoid asking silly questions. Study new technology and do not always regret the past anagogic time. Be conscious that photography is a difficult business, but that it has the advantage to have many fields in which to concentrate your activity (from art to advertisement, from still life to interior design, from photojournalism to conflict photographer, etc.). Travel always with a camera like the great photographers of the past used to. Know about the limit of the privacy’s laws, but the photo you shoot or you may avoid to shoot are your personal choice. And be a dreamer.
Eliseo Barbàra
MoST Artists
