Giovanni Chiaramonte 1948 – 2023
A photographer, a critic, a scholar, a master.
There are few personalities who, with courage and coherence, confront their entire lives by carrying out projects and initiatives where culture becomes the acquisition of an awareness of oneself and one’s being in the world with its history and contradictions.
Giovanni Chiaramonte was a great photographer who, since the 1970s, has made research his strong point: the search for a poetics that corresponds to a method of reading reality in order to be able to translate and tell it, always with an awareness of what is at stake, the responsibility of a writing that is interpretation in search of truth.
Giovanni Chiaramonte was a scholar who always sought to understand the logic of a complex, articulated language, in dialogue between photography, cinema, art and literature, with the desire to reach the depth of the image’s symbolic meaning.
But he was also a great pedagogue, devoted to teaching, devoting energy and time to many young photographers so that they, in turn, could find the opportunity to express themselves through photography.
He was also a great organizer of events and projects, with the visionary ability to build a publishing house, the first dedicated to photography in Italy: Punto e Virgola with his friend Luigi Ghirri, and numerous exhibitions and itineraries such as the “Viaggio in Italia” adventure that revolutionized our view of the contemporary landscape.
There are many books that he leaves us as paths to follow to confront his faith, his questionings and find our way in the world.
Giovanni Chiaramonte is a man to whom we all owe something, and to whom we must say thank you.
Piero Pozzi
