Gianni Berengo Gardin (Santa Margherita Ligure 1930), began to take up photography in 1954, after having lived in Rome, Venice, Lugano and Paris. In 1965 he settled in Milan and began his professional career dedicating himself to reportage, social investigation, architectural documentation and environmental description. His first photos, as a semi-amateur, were published in 1954 in il Mondo, directed by Mario Pannunzio, with whom he collaborated until 1965. He worked with the main Italian and foreign newspapers, with the Italian Touring Club and with the 'Istituto Geografico De Agostini, but has mainly devoted himself to the creation of photographic books, publishing over 200 of them. In 1963 he was awarded by the World Press Photo. In 1990 he was invited of honor to the "Mois de la Photo" in Paris where he won the Brassai Prize. In 1995 he won the Leica Oskard Barnack Award at the "Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie" in Arles. In 1998 he won ex aequo the Goldoni Oscar Award for the best photo book of the year with Zingari in Palermo. He has held about 200 solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, and his images are part of the collections of various museums and cultural foundations, including the National Chalcography of Rome, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and the Collection photo FNAC in Paris, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne.
In 1972 the magazine "Modern Photography" included him among the "32 World's Top Photographers" ”. In 1975 Cecil Beaton mentioned him in the book "The magic Image: the genius of photography from 1839 to the present day." And H. Gombrich mentioned him as the only photographer in the book “The Image and the Eye” (Oxford 1982). Italo Zannier in the "History of Italian Photography" (Rome-Bari 1987) defined him as "the most remarkable photographer of the post-war period", and he is among the 80 photographers chosen by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 2003 for the exhibition “Les choix d Henri Cartier-Bresson ”. In 2006, on the occasion of one of his exhibitions, he gave a speech at the European Parliament building in Brussels. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious "Lucie Award" for his career in the United States and in 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Degree in History and Art Criticism by the University of Milan.
