Born in 1925 in Senigallia, Italy. Died 2000 in Senigallia, Italy.

Mario Giacomelli is widely regarded as one of the foremost Italian photographers of the twentieth century. Born into poverty, he lived his entire life in Senigallia, a town on the Adriatic coast in Italy’s Marche region. After purchasing his first camera in 1953, Giacomelli quickly gained recognition for the raw expressiveness of his images, which echoed many of the concerns of postwar Neorealist film and Existentialist literature, with their interests in the conditions of everyday life and in ordinary people as thinking, feeling individuals. His preference for grainy film and high-contrast paper resulted in bold, geometric compositions with deep blacks and glowing whites. Most frequently focusing his camera on the people, landscapes, and seascapes of the Marche, Giacomelli often spent several years exploring a photographic idea, expanding and reinterpreting it, or repurposing an image made for one series for inclusion in another. By applying titles derived from poetry, he transformed familiar subjects into meditations on the themes of time, memory, and existence.

Giacomelli’s works are represented in international collections including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; ational Gallery of Canada, Ottowa; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK, among others.