The exhibition Il Diaframma 1967-1996: una storia italiana just closed at Palazzo Giureconsulti. It was April, the 13th. Almost forty years ago. During that very spring in 1967 the first European gallery completely dedicated to photography opened in Milan thanks to Lanfranco Colombo, to his passion and to his strong will to have photography discovered and known. The location was perfect for an art still so young then in Italy, an art which was still looking for its own languages and forms of expression. It was situated in via Brera 10, in the very center of Milan, close to the famous Pinacoteca and near the bar Jamaica, were famous artists such as Cassinari, Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana, used to meet. It was just in the middle of a “magic” district, plenty of art galleries, artists and art lovers .
Lanfranco, who has recently disappeared, used to be a pioneer in this field – Il Diaframma neither asked photographers to pay in order to exhibit nor sold photos, his way being different from other existing locations – with his volcanic and inexhausted strength in projecting and his ability to look beyond the sixties and seventies, when this adventure started.
He was a manager in the steel industry then, but he devoted all his free time to photography: he also practiced it with good results, indeed, but he was more keen to broadly promote photography and photographers. One of his point was to let Italian photography be known abroad. This way the gallery became a very special, almost magical place were, besides photographers, authors, journalists, critics and people fond of photography met.
During its three decades of history Il Diaframma hosted both already well-known photographers – After the opening he exhibited Paolo Monti, Mary Ellen Mark, David Hamilton, Renè Burri – and young authors . Exhibits at Il Diaframma were not only images to be seen, but people to meet, some photographers that Lanfranco somehow “adopted” were followed passionately in the particular world on photography. When you entered that courtyard and that space you were suddenly surrounded by the force of photography, somehow involved in an ante-litteram 4th dimension image experience, thanks also to Lanfranco telling fascinating stories about photography. Wether you loved him or not, anyone then interested in photography owes a lot to him. A man who so often sponsored and sustained both the gallery activities as well as the editorial ones with his own assets when he couldn’t involve any other sponsor.
As a distinctive feature, Il Diaframma Gallery was opened to all genres and styles of photography: the only limit was the absolute quality of the images.
The Gallery (which hosted more than three hundred exhibitions, organized festival and events all over Italy and published photographic books and magazines) couldn’t survive the crisis period of the second half of the nineties despite Lanfranco will and passion. And Milan wasn’t able to keep it open, maybe not even understanding its being a landmark in photographic culture: Il Diaframma was one of the main places where contemporary photography and photographers were recognised at that time. Lanfranco, indeed, didn’t stop his work on and in favor of photography, creating, organizing and incessantly supporting new initiatives, until he was ninety.
“If so many venues dedicated to photography exist in Italy today, and if there is so much interest in photography, much is due to a gallery, such as Il Diaframma of Lanfranco Colombo, which in the sixties, “showed the way” cudrator Roberto Mutti says.
The exhibit was organized within Photofestival 2015 and it is produced by Fondazione 3M.
EXHIBITION
Il Diaframma 1967-1996: una storia italiana
Palazzo Giureconsulti
Piazza Mercanti 2
20123 Milan
Italy
http://www.palazzogiureconsulti.it
www.milanophotofestival.it
