Carmelo Bongiorno

Born in Sicily, Carmelo Bongiorno began photographing in 1978 by focusing primarily on his island, he photographs in black and white.

Early career From 1982, after his studies, he decided to devote himself exclusively to photography, and, in 1983, he founded with his friends and Carmelo Mangione Carmelo Nicosia, the artistic experimentation group Gruppo Fase and leads artistic experimentation of the basis of an incorrect use of the photographic technique. It is far from the classical canons of documentary photography, to produce highly personal images, in which his taste for the dark, looking for particular lights of dusk, express a vision that does not try to show a place or an event, but the personal experience of the author.

In 1989, his work was rewarded at the Rencontres d'Arles by the award of the Grand Prix Kodak for young European photography and he published in 1992 his first monograph, Luoghi Privati, edited by Ken Damy and the photography museum of Brescia.

Later career

In 2000, the Piccolo Teatro invited him, along with Wim Wenders, Ugo Mulas and Duane Michals, to present a solo exhibition as part of an event called Teatro della Visione. In 2001, he published Bagliori 1995–2000 with Federico Motta Editore in Milan, which accompanies an exhibition that travels across Italy and Europe. In his presentation of the book, the publisher emphasizes that "this experiment results in a lonely journey, which among the mastery of light and the expression of an existential malaise in which blend shapes and figures, puts focus on the inner experience of their passions and anxieties."

He has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, Catania. Bongiorno's works are held in the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Milan.