ning to shoot photographs of the country, especially
the land and the people of southern Italy, without
aestheticizing the image. In literature, representatives
of neo-realism include Elio Vittorini and Cesare
Zavattini; in film, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossel-
lini, and Luchino Visconti; and in photography,
Nino Migliori, Franco Pinna, and Gianni Berengo
Gardin. The photographic works were influenced by
a reality that their authors had experienced and
wanted others to experience, but also showed an
influence of American precursors from, for example,
the Farm Security Administration and Eugene W.
Smith. At the same time (1953–1955), Paul Strand,
with his objective viewpoint, was photographing his
seriesUn paesein the Italian town Dorf Luzzara in
the Po valley. Within this cultural and photographic
context, Giacomelli developed an individual style
that distinguished him decisively from the others.
His photography did not serve as reportage or doc-
umentation, but it did help the author to overcome
his innermost fears. He conceived the camera as a
medium of expression, like the brush is for the pain-
ter and the pen for the poet.
In 1954, he bought a used 69-inch Kobell
camera that he modified to produce a 68½-inch
image. He was largely unconcerned about lighting
conditions because he used an electronic flash. His
mode of expression, whose composition and formal
structure he learned while doing graphic work in the
printing business, consists of many elements. These
include the stark juxtaposition of black and white
and a strong, coarse granularity made on photo
paper sensitive to contrasts. He also used apparent-
ly accidental, formal elements created from con-
sciously ‘‘bad’’ photographic techniques, such as
moving the camera and shooting out of focus or
resorting to double exposure and extreme develop-
ment of the negatives. This makes many of his works
appear to be a mixture of spiritual and material
objects. Other works highlight the tensions created
by strong graphic contrasts. The background is
often washed out in an overexposed white while
the black bodies seem to float. Movement in photo-
graphy is very important for Giacomelli because it
represents life and the passage of time. He developed
his own visual language, as he also did in his poetry,
and it enabled him to represent scenes that corre-
spond to his vision and perception of the world. The
titles of his photography series are usually borrowed
from stories or poems by authors who inspired him,
such as Cesare Pavese, Edgar Lee Masters, Emily
Dickinson, Giacomo Leopardi, and Eugenio Mon-
tale. Giacomelli valued the series, which after years
he often assembled anew by placing the images in a
different sequence. His preferred subjects were poor
and simple people. His photography projects would
last some three years because he entered into
sympathetic contact with each situation by living
with the people in order to eventually work among
them. After 1986, he broadened the content of his
images with symbolic, artificial elements, such as
pigeons, cardboard masks, and dogs made of fur
fabric. An example of this is the photography series
Il pittore Bastari(1992–1993).
Among his most well-known series isVerra`la
morte e avra`i tuoi occhi—a title inspired by a Pavese
poem—which is composed of photographs from
1955–1956, 1966–1968, and 1983. Ruthless and
blunt, Giacomelli presents the residents of a home
for the elderly in up-close, intimate situations, with
the camera flash creating contrasts with their
wrinkled skin. In another work, he poses these
elderly people, who are dying, against the young,
suffering people from Lourdes (1957). Giacomelli
took the images in the seriesScanno—named after
the small town in the Abruzzi region of Italy that he
visited in 1957 and 1959, five years after Henri Car-
tier-Bresson—in only a few days. Although he
photographed the residents in their daily routines,
his eye and technique lend the images the expression
of a mystical engagement with the unconscious. The
formal oppositions in his photographs of black-clad
wo-men standing in front of white walls reflect the
inner contrasts of youth and age, tradition and pro-
gress, masculinity and femininity. The seriesPresa
di coscienza sulla naturais composed of images
taken from 1954 to 2000. With an abstract effect,
this series displays photographs of cultivated earth,
oceans, and beach landscapes, which are photo-
graphed in part from an airplane. Giacomelli edited
many negatives so that the print better matched his
intentions. These kinds of representations show
influences of the Italian artist Alberto Burri, whom
Giacomelli met in 1968. Although the title of
another series,Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il
volto(I have no Hands to Caress my Face, from a
poem by David Maria Turoldo) (1961–1963),
sounds melancholy; these photographs of priests
playing in and against a backdrop of snow have a
spontaneous, happy, and vital effect.Caroline Bran-
son(1971–1973), which was inspired by Edgar Lee
Master’sSpoon River Anthology, is a love story in
suggestive images, whose dramatic content repre-
sents the loss of ecstasy and the circle of death and
rebirth. Giacomelli especially used the surreal effect
created by the double exposure of a negative, which
suits the presentation of visions of the unseen and
unconscious. InFavola, verso possibili significati
interiori(1983–1984), Giacomelli presents largely
abstract images of bent iron rails that encourageGIACOMELLI, MARIO