OPENING OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION “IL TEATRO DEL LAVORO” BY MAURO RAFFINI

Sunday, September 28th, at 7:00 p.m.; Bistrot Culturale Ramo d’Oro, Galleria Umberto I, Piazza della Repubblica, 4

Event followed by the screening of Tinto Brass’s movie Chi lavora è perduto at 9:00 p.m.

Event in partnership with Ramo d’Oro

On Sunday, September 28th, at 7:00 p.m., at the Galleria Umberto I, Mauro Raffini ‘ s exhibition Il teatro del lavoro will be inaugurated in collaboration with Ramo d’Oro . As if in a dazzling theatrical setting, Mauro Raffini portrays late 20th-century Italian industry from Piedmont to Sicily. The actors are technicians, workers, testers, and artisans who play the part, staring motionless at the analog camera to resemble a 19th-century pose. Proud of their skills, they dominate the daily work environment and convey the dignity and commitment they put into designing, building, and doing. Twenty-one unpublished shots by one of Italy’s most significant photographers, who has been able to portray the world of work with both passion and a critical eye throughout his whole career. In the photographs, the vivid and unreal colors – like those of a nightclub – are achieved by placing sheets of gelatin in front of the lamps that enlighten the scene. Purples, reds, blues, and yellows all blend together, giving rise to new and often unexpected color hues. No Photoshop tricks, but entirely manual work, sometimes with surprising results. The photographic campaign was carried out partly on behalf of SAP, a German multinational software company, partly for other clients, and partly as personal research. In Piedmont, Fiat, ENEL, Alessi, Fiat Ferroviaria, and RAI; in Liguria, Piaggio Aero Industries; in Lombardy, Emi Music, Yomo, RCS, Pirelli, AEM, Camozzi, and Banca Lombarda; in Veneto, De Longhi and Fedrigoni; in Emilia-Romagna, Giesse and Enichem; in Rome, Poste Italiane, Aeroporti di Roma, and Alitalia Cargo; and in Sicily, Amaro Averna. We would like to thank Domenico Leccisotti for his collaboration in organizing the exhibition.

The exhibition is presented by Mauro Raffini .

Last day of exhibition: October 5th.

Admission method : free access.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Mauro Raffini was born in Cuneo in 1946. He began taking photographs in 1968 and has been a professional photographer since 1971. From the 1970s, he produced numerous reportages in Europe and collaborated with Cooperazione Italiana, documenting projects and infrastructure in Brazil and Mozambique. During that same period, he also worked as a photography critic and technician, writing for focus magazines. Since the early 1990s, he has devoted himself to architectural and landscape photography, later developing his own personal research on color, leading him to collaborate with some of the country’s major industrial companies. Simultaneously, he continued his work on social issues such as nomads, the homeless, and multi-ethnicity. He is the first Italian photographer to be hosted at M.A.C.A.M. (Maglione Open-Air Museum of Contemporary Art) with a permanent work, a photographic collage on Italian artists. In 1996, he dedicated himself to research on multi-ethnicity on behalf of the city of Turin, for a project funded by the EEC, and coordinated the photographic part of the volume Foto di gruppo: immagini dall?economia italiana 1997, in collaboration with leading Italian photographers. In 1998, he was appointed scientific coordinator for the photographic part of the EEC project, GAL Azione Ossola. In February 1999, he exhibited at the Accademia Albertina in Turin in the exhibition Lo Spirito dei Luoghi, promoted by the Piedmont Region, to represent Piedmonts’ industry and craftsmanship, with photographers Bruna Biamino, Roberto Bossaglia, and Mimmo Jodice. The exhibition was also brought to the Stephen Gang Gallery in New York and at the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin. He has also been curating photography exhibitions for several years: in 2012, he curated an anthology of the photographer Chiara Samugheo for the Turin National Cinema Museum. He is currently working on the MigrEye itinerant exhibition project, which recounts three moments of immigration over the last five decades. As photo editor of the Exodos exhibition for the Piedmont Region, he was awarded the Medal of the President of the Republic for his excellent work on the project. His photographs are featured in collections, museums, and foundations both in Italy and abroad. His portraits of Alberto Moravia, Primo Levi, and Fernanda Pivano have been donated to the Alberto Moravia Fund in Rome, the Primo Levi International Study Center in Turin, and the Fernanda Pivano Fund at the Benetton Study and Research Foundation in Treviso. His work is widely referenced in the volume Il ‘900 in fotografia, edited by Marina Miraglia, and documented online in the Encyclopédie internationale des photographes by the Auer Photo Foundation.