Exhibition: Harari/ italians

The Ferrero Foundation in Alba presents Guido Harari’s exhibition project HARARI / ITALIANS from Friday, April 5 to Sunday, May 26, 2024.

It is a journey in the making that the photographer has been cultivating for more than 30 years and that unfolds through the faces and stories of a selection of personalities who have left and are still leaving their mark on Italian history.

After the appointments in Ancona, Ferrara and Milan, Guido Harari ‘s photography project lands in Alba in a new guise, which also includes the screening of the documentary “Guido Harari.

The title is“Stray Looks” (Italy, 2023, 52′) directed by Daniele Cini and as heard right in the video:

The documentary chronicles the life and art of one of Italy’s greatest contemporary photographers, a master of musical portraits. Anyone who comes up with an iconic image of Lou Reed or David Bowie, Frank Zappa or Kate Bush or Italians Giorgio Gaber, Fabrizio de André, Vasco Rossi, Gianna Nannini is most likely thinking of a photograph by Guido Harari

HARARI / ITALIANS returns a narrative in images of the exceptional figures who shaped Italy’s historical memory.

The idea stemmed from Harari’s meeting with journalist Beppe Severgnini, who in the late 1990s launched the program “Italians, that is, Italians” on RAI, where he interviewed thirty world-famous compatriots.

The protagonists of Severgnini’s broadcast became the subjects of a series of thirty portraits taken by Harari in the Rai studio after the filming was completed.

These included Umberto Eco, Dario Fo, Gina Lollobrigida, Alberto Tomba, Gae Aulenti, Krizia and many others.

Over the years, the project has continued to feed and expand, evolving into a veritable archive of historical figures who have changed the face of Italy and also of bright young bets on the future.

Guido Harari’s choral portrait extends to characters such as. Alda Merini, who welcomes the photographer to his apartment on the Navigli; Gianni Agnelli, who recounts his encounter with Andy Warhol; Ennio Morricone, suggesting that he is portrayed hiding behind a door, leaving only his own glasses floating in midair visible; Nicolo Govoni and Bebe Vio, two young people who fight every day to build the Italian society of tomorrow.

With spontaneity and mastery, carefully documenting himself but without constraining the subject with rigid instructions, Guido Harari captures the essence of the protagonists of his shots and with the exhibition HARARI / ITALIANS explores the portrait as a tool for investigating the other.

Guido Harari explains:

In portraits as in life, the right moment is suddenly. There is a spike in attention during a shooting. In a progression of immersing ourselves in another world, a maximum level of concentration, of emotion production, is produced and sustained. Soon the silence of telepathic, nonverbal communication is established. A non-intellectual, totally emotional mode of encounter

HARARI / ITALIANS brings to Alba the.most recent evolution of a project creative of historical memory still in existence, where the challenge of the dialogue between author and subject proceeds through each and every shot, and the faces of the past are accompanied by those of new generations in a Very personal account of recent and contemporary Italian history.

Accompanying the exhibition, in advance of the volume to be published at the end of the year by Rizzoli Lizard Editore, is an Album that, in addition to photographic documentation of the exhibition, brings together contributions by Guido Harari and Beppe Severgnini.

Guido Harari

Self-taught inspired by the great rock and jazz photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, he established himself in the early 1970s as a music photographer and journalist .

Over time he has also explored reportage, institutional portraiture, advertising and fashion, working with major Italian and international publications.

Numerous record covers for artists such as Kate Bush, David Crosby, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Ute Lemper, Paul McCartney, Michael Nyman, Lou Reed, Simple Minds, and Frank Zappa.

In Italy, he has collaborated mainly with Claudio Baglioni, Andrea Bocelli, Angelo Branduardi, Vinicio Capossela, Paolo Conte, Pino Daniele, Fabrizio De André, Eugenio Finardi, Ligabue, Mia Martini, Gianna Nannini, PFM, Vasco Rossi, and the La Scala Philharmonic conducted by Riccardo Muti.

He has produced numerous books and solo exhibitions, as well as curated projects such asthe large multimedia exhibition on Fabrizio De André produced by Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, the Art Kane exhibition.

Visionary for the Galleria civica in Modena and for Fondazione Made in Cloister in Naples, and the exhibition Pino Daniele Alive, also at Fondazione Made in Cloister in Naples.

In 2011 he launched Wall Of Sound Gallery, a photo gallery dedicated to the imagery of music, in Alba, where he has resided for years, which was later joined by Wall Of Sound Editions, a publisher of limited edition catalogs and books.