Gabriele Basilico

GABRIELLE BASILICO (Milan, 1944 - 2013).
"Genova".
In silver gelatin.
Provenance: author's family.
Signed with dry stamping.
Measurements: 24 x 31 cm.

Gabriele Basilico, born in Milan in 1944, was one of the most influential architectural and urban landscape photographers of the 20th century. Initially trained as an architect, he soon discovered that photography allowed him to understand and narrate the city with a precision that went beyond the drawing or the plan. His rigorous and analytical gaze focused from the outset on industrial and peripheral spaces, as he demonstrated in his series Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche, which placed him on the international scene in the 1980s.

From then on, Basilico dedicated his work to exploring cities around the world, their ports, their margins and their transformations, always through a black and white aesthetic that made architecture the absolute protagonist. One of his most emblematic works was the one he made in Beirut after the civil war, where he documented with almost archeological precision the remains of the destruction and, years later, its reconstruction.

Over time, his style adopted a more topographical and dispassionate approach, interested in liminal spaces and territories in transition. His images, almost always devoid of human presence, show the city as a living organism in constant change.

His works are today considered an indispensable reference for understanding the evolution of the urban landscape in modernity.