Francesco Radino is one of the masters of contemporary Italian photography.
Active for fifty years in many fields, from social investigation to the representation of the anthropized landscape, committed to the development of an imaginary that starts from reality but builds refined forms and variegated visual stratifications, he is a figure with free creativity that places himself outside the box.
In his work he has always spontaneously intertwined productions on commission, industrial, public, editorial and artistic research, sensing in advance that in our complex contemporaneity the world of the profession and that of art would increasingly coincide. Participating in the developments of research photography on contemporary landscape, over the years he has developed an intimate way of exploring current reality in its profound economic, historical, social, cultural transformations: his work therefore goes beyond the genre of landscape, opening up to every aspect of the world, from nature, his great passion, to urbanized territories, from the human figure to objects, from animals to architecture, ranging widely from the Italian to the international context, with frequent trips, in particular, to the USA and Japan.
Francesco Radino's photographs are woven with thoughts and memories, moments of reality and fragments of experience, they are animated by analogies and formal references that continually affirm that the world is one and its complexity cannot be looked at in separate sectors.
Thus, fish, industrial objects, shadows, trees, flowers, beaches, archaeological remains, waters, mountains, city streets, historical and contemporary architecture, skies, stones, meadows, bodies, become objects of an inquiring and poetic, organizing and imaginative gaze. "The world of forms is freed - he writes - and goes beyond the immediate sense", to bind different images there is "a thin but strong thread that speaks the language of proximity" and they are "indicators of reality but also allow us to glimpse the possibility of a way out of it".
With a deep visual culture (his grandfather was a photographer, his father and mother were both painters), frequenter of oriental cultures, Radino imagines through photography a world of various figures, all worthy of being looked at and thought about, in a continuous oscillation from nature to culture.
The exhibition Francesco Radino. Fotografie 1968-2018 presents the most significant research of the artist's production over a period of fifty years and is organized into thematic-chronological sections. It is accompanied by a 320-page volume with 230 black and white and color photographs, in Italian and English, published by Silvana Editoriale, with texts by Roberta Valtorta, who is the curator, Giovanni Arpino, Giovanna Calvenzi, Paolo Cognetti, Eleonora Fiorani, Antonella Pellizzari, Urs Stahel, Fabrizio Trisoglio, Mauro Zanchi and Francesco Radino himself.
Francesco Radino was born in Bagno a Ripoli (Florence) in 1947, his parents who were both painters.
He lived in Milan until his passing in 2022. In 1968 he began taking photographs and in 1970 he decided to become a photographer. In the 1980s he took part in numerous public commission projects (Province of Milan, Lombardy Region, EU Jap Fest, Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Museum of Contemporary Photography). He has been a long-time collaborator of the Touring Club Italiano and the AEM of Milan (Municipal Energy Company). Since the 2000s he has also dedicated himself to the creation of some videos. He has exhibited his work in Italian, European, Japanese and American galleries and museums and his works are part of international public and private collections.
Over the years he has published many books. Among the most important: Italia di Lucania, 1981; Four in Verbania (not to mention the lake) (with Gabriele Basilico, Luigi Ghirri, Natale Zoppis), 1983; Gothic fortresses and electric moons (with Gianni Berengo Gardin and Gabriele Basilico), 1984; Göteborg, 1987; Modus Videndi, 1989; The inventions of the gaze. Five photographers interpret the night in Milan (with Gabriele Basilico, Olivo Barbieri, Joel Meyerowitz, Martin Parr), 1989; Morphosis, 1992; Mutations, 1994; Francesco Radino. Photographs 1982-1994, 1995; Milan between light and heat, 1995; Le vie d'acqua: rogge, navigli e canali, 2000; Inside, 2001; Capri, Milan 2004; Reframe, the rooms of time, 2007; Milan, 2015; The cathedrals of energy, 2016; The railway yards of Milan, today before tomorrow, 2018.
Mudima - press release
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