América Latina, 1960-2013, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 19 November 2013 – 6 April 2014; Museo Amparo, Puebla, 24 May 2014 – 29 September 2014, another
Literature
A. Alonso, América Latina, 1960-2013, Photographies, Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, 2013, pp. 78-79
Catalogue Essay
Born in Italy, Paolo Gasparini studied photography in the early 1950s under the influence of Italian Neorealism. He immigrated to Venezuela in 1954 and began working as a professional photographer, contributing to the magazine A, Hombre y Expresión. He has travelled widely in Cuba and Venezuela, capturing images of cities and their inhabitants. Recording the tumultuous history of the continent through urban signs, Gasparini has become a leading figure of Latin American photography. He has exhibited in such prominent institutions as MoMA, New York; Fondation A Stichting, Brussels; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
For over 60 years, Paolo Gasparini has focused his lens on street and documentary photography across Latin America. In his experimental approach to street photography, he captures fragments, reflections and inversions, shifting our attention to the details that may otherwise be missed. ‘I think photographs can help us learn how to look,’ continues Gasparini, ‘How to think about and resist this world that’s consecrated to the grandiloquence of symbols.’ The four dynamic photographs of the same typographic cityscape that comprise El hábitat de los hombres… were taken upon his return to Caracas from Cuba where he had worked for the Revolución journal and had adopted the 35mm camera format. Another print of one of the images from this polyptych, along with a selection of Gasparini’s work, is in the collection of New York’s MoMA, which began acquiring his work in 1958.
Born in Italy, Paolo Gasparini studied photography in the early 1950s under the influence of Italian Neorealism. He immigrated to Venezuela in 1954 and began working as a professional photographer, contributing to the magazine A, Hombre y Expresión. He has traveled widely in Cuba and Venezuela, capturing images of cities and their inhabitants. Recording the tumultuous history of the continent through urban signs, Gasparini has become a leading figure of Latin American photography. He has exhibited in such prominent institutions as MoMA, New York; Fondation A Stichting, Brussels; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.