In the last few years, photography has been achieving widespread support, as images can communicate a wide range of feelings and emotions and often convey different sorts of messages to the great public.

That's the reason why the Credito Valtellinese - in association with Sondrio local government - is opening the 2002 calendar of events with a major exhibition called 'Riprese - Personenaturacittà' (portraits of people, nature and towns), mounted by art reviewer Roberto Mutti. From February 2002 to May 2002, Mutti is going to present a number of photographers who have been at work on very peculiar subjects.

Basically, the exhibitions hosted at the Credito Valtellinese Gallery inside Palazzo Sertoli and at Sondrio History and Arts Museum inside Palazzo Sassi de' Lavizzari are presenting couples of photographers who have looked at similar subjects from different points of view. There are explicit, still subtle cross-references focusing on both similarities and differences, on points in common as well as on the conflicting points between the projects.

The first exhibition, which was opened on February 14th, included a series of photographs by Sergio Caminata exhibited at the gallery inside Palazzo Sertoli and a project by brothers Enzo and Raffaello Bassotto exhibited at the Museum inside Palazzo Sassi. The subject of these two collections was people. Next exhibition will be opened on March 7th. The title is Peoplenaturetowns. In fact, this time, the subject is nature. It includes a series of photographs capturing the various aspects of nature. Filippo Maggia has worked on some portraits of a sky with moon and of woods printed with turns obtained from natural essences. The other photographer, Tancredi Mangano, presents some abstract images, intense, almost hypnotic, visions of the sea and a conceptual project on the identification of the human body with nature.

Urban spaces and two-faced images are the subjects of the third exhibition, which will be hosted in Sondrio starting from April 4th 2002. Stefania Beretta is the author of a collection of photographs of towns in the world, which captures the subjects from various points of view. Beretta also presents interior spaces in rooms where she used to live. In such a charming combination of images, indoor and outdoor spaces look almost like metaphors. The other author, Luigi Erba, looks at the connection existing between space and time from his own point of view. Regardless of those rules that impose a clear distinction between the photograms, he places images one on another, just like in a dream.

The images and photographs included in the six projects are collected in a catalogue published by 'Edizioni Fondazione Credito Valtellinese', which will be provided to the visitors coming to the gallery the day of the opening.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sergio Caminata
Born in Milan in 1955, Sergio Caminata studied photography at the Rizzoli Institute, then Architecture in Milan. He soon left university to concentrate exclusively on the art of photography. Assistant photographer in 1976, then photographer in 1980, he worked with some of the most important fashion magazines (e.g. Grazia, Amica, Anna, Gioia, Donna, Harper's Bazar, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Madame Figarò, MarieClaire, Fur Sie, Freundin).
In 1985, in association with Milan Centro 'Il Diaframma', he presented a photo gallery called Stilisti in primo piano. In the early '90s, he started travelling to Africa. Motta published his book entitled Himba. A great number of the photographs that Caminata took in the Dark Continent are now used by publishing house Feltrinelli on covers of novels.

Enzo and Raffello Bassotto
Born in Verona, in 1938 and 1946 respectively, Enzo and Raffello started working together as photographers at the end of the '70s. Since 1980, after finishing a project for Verona Local Government Photo Archives, they have been at work above all on books collecting photographs and on the mounting of personal exhibitions hosted in public and private galleries, both in Italy and abroad. Meanwhile, they have also worked with Italian and international magazines and newspapers. Most of all, they have been looking at society, literature and landscapes, in particular urban views. In fact, they have worked on a project called 'Archivio dello Spazio', which has been promoted by Milan provincial government for the protection of the artistic heritage and the environment. In 1995, on the occasion of the Venice Biennale, they mounted an exhibition entitled 'L'io e il suo doppio', which was hosted in the Italian pavilion. In the last few years, brothers Bassotto have been working with Verona International Center of Photography Scavi Scaligeri, mounting exhibitions and working on projects for the Photography Research Center. A great number of photographs by the Bassotto brothers are now in private and public collections, which are kept in Italian and international museums.

Filippo Maggia
Filippo Maggia was born in Biella in 1960. Since 1993, he has been taking care of the photo exhibitions mounted at Modena Municipal Gallery and since 1999 of those hosted at Turin Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l'Arte. Since 1996, he has been taking care of the Malerba Collection and since 1998 he has been responsible for the series 'Photography as a Language' published by Baldini&Castoldi. He teaches History of contemporary photography and Design at Turin European Design Institute. In 2000 and 2001, he was invited to Prato Contemporary Art Center Luigi Pecci as guest curator for photography. Since January 2001, he has been a member of the Bologna National Gallery of Modern Art Scientific Committee. Since May 2001, he has been the host of 'Talking Pictures', a telecast about contemporary photography on Italy's National Television.

Tancredi Mangano
Born in Lisieux (France) in 1969, Tancredi Mangano lives and works in Milan.
From 1988 to 1992, he learned painting techniques at the Sforzesco Castle School of Art in Milan, specializing in engraving. From 1990 to 1992, he attended a course in professional photography at the Riccardo Bauer Institute (former Umanitaria) in Milan. In 1992 he worked with Antonia Mulas, as assistant photographer.
In 1993 he worked together with Francesco Radino, Gianpietro Agostini and Mario Mulas on a project called 'Milano illuminata' sponsored by the AEM. One year later, he worked with the group 'Scema la luce' on a project promoted by Milan provincial government for the protection of the artistic heritage and the environment. He also worked with the ''Archivio della comunicazione e dell'immagine per l'Etnologia e la Storia Sociale della regione Lombardia' (Communications and portraits of the Ethnology and Social History of the Region Lombardy ).
In 1995, he worked, together with Gianpietro Agostini, Filippo Maggia and Natale Zoppis, on a publishing project called 'Impiantistica rivelata' for the AICARR (Italian Association for Air Conditioning, Heating, Refrigeration). The project was exhibited at the EOS Gallery of Contemporary Art in Milan.
The most important exhibitions of photographs by Tancredi Mangano are: 'Contact', which was hosted at Chiasso Cons Arc gallery in 1996, 'Epithélial', hosted at Prato Dryphoto Gallery in 1998, 'In superficie' (Dryphoto Gallery, in 2000). Not to be forgotten: 'Percorsi', hosted at Bologna Otto Contemporanea Gallery, 'Corto Circuito EEC project' - the Italian section of this exhibition was mounted by Filippo Maggia in Oulu, (Finland), Madrid and Modena - 'Da Guarene all'Etna', hosted in Taormina, Modena, Milan and Venice.

Stefania Beretta was born in Vacallo (Switzerland) in 1957. She has been a freelance photographer since 1979. She specialized in Photography of Architecture and objects of art, continuing at the same time to challenge herself and hone her art. In 1955, she received the Photography Award from the Ticino Fine Arts Society. In 1994, she received a grant from the Swiss Association of painters, sculptors and Architects, which allowed her to spend six months in Paris Cité Internationale des Arts. This experience led to the publication of a book called Paris Noir, in 1997. In 1998 she was in Vilnius (Lithuania), where she worked on a personal project for the Europos Parkas Arts Center. In the same year, she was given a federal grant by the Gleyre Foundation (Switzerland). Since 1980 she has been often travelling around Europe, Asia and America. The book called 'Città d'Europa' (European Towns), published by CGA&P - a publishing house based in Lugano - in 1998, includes a series of photographs that make us understand Beretta's personal experiences and way of living.
In 2000, Paris publishing house Trans Photographic Press published her book called 'Rooms'. Since 1985, Stefania Beretta has been regularly exhibiting her works in Switzerland, as well as in the rest of Europe. Photographs by Stefania Beretta are now part of public (e.g. Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, the Swiss Photography Foundation) and private collections. She currently lives and works in Giubiasco (Switzerland).

Luigi Erba
Luigi Erba was born in Lecco in 1949. He started working as a photographer in the 1970s, with portraits of the alpine landscape seen from an inner viewpoint and quite in a fantastic way. In the '80s, Erba, reconsidering those concepts that he had learned from experience, looked at the marks on the landscape from a more poetic and personal viewpoint. This led to the exhibitions entitled 'Concetti Temporali' (Time Concepts) and 'Sequenze Temporali' (Time sequences). At the same time, he was thinking over the photographer's ability to convey meanings through his art by studying the relationship existing between projects and randomness, methods and emotions, reality and imagination (creating what he called the 'Interfotogrammi'). He looked at images from quite an innovative point of view. On several occasions, he worked on the two concepts of space and time , by using two subsequent parts of the film. As from the early '90s, he has used this method to portray the landscape ('Un luogo sull'altro', which means laying one place on another). He created a new kind of photography, which could be defined in progress photography, resulting from the superimposition of more images of the same place in the same roll of film. He obtained photographs combining reality with imagination, randomness with projects, which he arranged like in a polyptych. Some photographs by Luigi Erba are part of Bergamo Carrara Academy Collection, some others of Parma Camera Work Collection. Not to be forgotten are those that are kept in Brescia Ken Damy Museum, Modena Modern Art Museum (the Fontana Collection), Turin Italian Photography Foundation and Paris Bibliothèque Nationale. Luigi Erba is also interested in History of Photography. He has been responsible for the column entitled Flashback in the Immagini Foto Pratica magazine and is the author of essays on the Milanese Photography and the iconography of postcards.