Gianni Berengo Gardin, the celebrated Italian photographer dubbed "Italy's Cartier-Bresson," passed away on August 6, 2025, at the age of 94. The master of black-and-white photography, who documented Italy's social transformations for nearly six decades, died in Genoa, though he always considered himself Venetian at heart.
Throughout his remarkable career spanning from 1954 onwards, Berengo Gardin captured life as it emerged and receded like the tides of his beloved Venice. The humanist photographer and photojournalist meticulously documented the social changes across Italy, from the city of the Doges to Puglia, from Palermo to the alpine meadows of South Tyrol, covering everything from psychiatric hospitals to Roma camps. His extensive body of work, created exclusively in black and white, includes more than one million negatives and over 260 published books.
While widely recognized and celebrated in Italy, Berengo Gardin remained relatively unknown on the other side of the Alps, despite a major retrospective showcasing his "quiet genius" at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris in 2005. His most iconic images were captured in Venice, including two lovers kissing under a gallery in St. Mark's Square, where the pillars stretch toward the background reminiscent of Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca's Annunciation. Another memorable shot shows the same square captured from above in the snow, dotted with pigeons scattered by a little girl's chase.
One of his most celebrated photographs depicts two young people dancing in the dunes of Lido to the sound of a record player in 1958. His photograph of passengers crowded into a vaporetto, constructed with a sophisticated play of reflections in a window, was among the approximately 90 images that impressed Henri Cartier-Bresson and were chosen by him for exhibition in Paris in 2003 to inaugurate his Foundation.
Born in the seaside resort of Santa Margherita Ligure, near Genoa, in 1930, Berengo Gardin grew up in Rome before studying architecture in Venice, where his paternal family originated as glass merchants from Murano. Initially working as an editor for aeronautical magazines, he developed his interest in photography through this connection. He became part of the Venetian amateur photography club La Gondola and began collaborating with the political and cultural weekly Il Mondo from 1954, contributing photographs of Venetian streets and canals.
As a self-taught photographer, Berengo Gardin honed his skills through magazines, particularly Life and the uncompromising reportage of documentary photography master Eugene W. Smith (1918-1978), as well as books by Great Depression photographers Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, sent by an uncle who had emigrated to the United States. In the early 1950s, he spent several formative months in Paris, where, through another amateur club called 30×40, he met Robert Doisneau, Édouard Boubat, Daniel Masclet, and especially Willy Ronis, whom he followed in the field and who became one of his close friends.
Returning to Venice, he continued selling his photographs to various magazines before establishing himself in Milan in 1965, Italy's economic capital. There he worked for companies like Olivetti and collaborated with architects such as Carlo Scarpa and Renzo Piano, while continuing his humanist-inspired reportage work.
Ahead of Raymond Depardon, Berengo Gardin investigated Italian psychiatric hospitals with journalist Carla Cerati, revealing in a shocking book titled "Morire di classe" (Dying of One's Class, published in 1969) the prison-like reality of these institutions where patients were mistreated, tied to their beds, and locked in cells. These images were not "stolen" shots but taken with the patients' consent. He photographed nomadic communities in Trento, Padua, and later Florence with the same respect, creating "La disperata allegria" (Desperate Joy) in 1995.
Guided by what prominent Italian photo editor and exhibition curator Giovanna Calvenzi called "sober honesty," Berengo Gardin considered himself a "craftsman" rather than an artist. He never retouched his images, which were taken with film cameras, most often a Leica, using only natural light. Always in motion, he refused to use a tripod, which gave him "a feeling of narrowness, as if [he] were a boat at anchor."
Berengo Gardin occasionally infused his compositions with a touch of playfulness, such as a strange image of a woman lying on the ground with part of her body hidden by a garden table, as if she were cut in half (Milan, 1987). Few of his photographs lacked human presence, even if tiny. This is evident in a poetic view of a Lilliputian couple captured in a Tuscan landscape, walking on a winding, luminous path (1965), or in his peaceful series dedicated to still-life painter Giorgio Morandi's workshop in Bologna (1993).
His more recent work focused on giant cruise ships docking in Venice (2013-2015), which he called "monsters." This denunciatory work sparked controversy ten years ago when the city's mayor refused to allow it to be presented at the Doge's Palace. Berengo Gardin exhibited it at another venue in Venice, continuing his mission to bear witness.
A posthumous exhibition titled "Vera Fotografia - Gianni Berengo Gardin" is scheduled to run from September 12 to October 25 at the Polka Gallery in Paris. The photographer leaves behind an extraordinary legacy that captures Italy's transformation through the lens of a master who dedicated his life to documenting humanity with uncompromising honesty and artistic vision.
