Exhibition Posters: Ferdinando Scianna. Fashion, Life, and Lee Miller. Works 1930-1955

Best wishes by Beatrice Brandini

In Castiglia di Saluzzo (Cuneo, Piedmont), an exhibition showcases Ferdinando Scianna, the first Italian photographer to join the prestigious Magnum Photos agency, with “Ferdinando Scianna. Fashion, Life,” curated by Denis Curti. Meanwhile, at CAMERA, the Italian Center for Photography in Turin, the life and work of the fantastic Lee Miller is being celebrated. Lee Miller. Works 1930-1955, featuring 160 shots from the Lee Miller Archives, spanning twenty-five years of her career.

Two prestigious exhibitions, two icons of world photography, two immense talents who have given photography its own unique identity and immediate recognition, recounting a piece of twentieth-century history.

Ferdinando Scianna: Marpessa. Caltagirone, 1987. Dolce & Gabbana catalog. © Ferdinando Scianna.

Ferdinando Scianna is a masterful reporter who, for a period of his life, thanks largely to the intuition of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (back in 1987), masterfully dedicated himself to fashion, photographing a very young Marpessa in small Sicilian villages, squares, where fashion and everyday life intertwine. Scianna never sought to portray fashion as something luxurious and distant from the masses; he never sought to photograph the glamorous and perhaps superficial aspects of a dress or a model; Scianna always photographed life in its everydayness. He also applied a photojournalist’s language to fashion, creating authentic and poetic images. He went out into the streets, not shot in “artificial” studios. The resulting images, from forty years ago, are still utterly modern and perhaps among the first to have accepted fashion as a narrative, a story, a living and breathing novel.

 

Ferdinando Scianna: Marpessa. Sicily, 1987. Dolce & Gabbana catalog. © Ferdinando Scianna.

I’ve already talked about Lee Miller in an old post from 2015 (here’s the link for those who want to find it https://www.beatricebrandini.it/lee-miller-musa-artist-model-photographer-the-first-photojournalist-who-told-the-war/?lang=en),  describing the immense talent of this artist, but also her being a free and courageous woman. The exhibition, curated by Walter Guadagnini, is a tribute to the muse of artists such as Picasso, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, who captured dreamlike and extremely poetic visions—her unforgettable shots for Vogue—but also testimonies of the Second World War, such as the horror of the concentration camps, closely following American troops and documenting their exploits.

Lee Miller: Portrait of Space. Al Bulwayeb, near Siwa, Egypt, 1937 © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk.

The exhibition concludes with portraits of her closest friends, such as Lucian Freud, Renato Gottuso, and Richard Hamilton, happy, light-hearted shots taken in her country house in Sussex when Miller had already retired, but at the same time she retained a creative spirit that left a legacy of magnificent images.

Lee Miller. Opere 1930-1955

CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, via delle Rosine 18, Torino 011 0881150

camera@camera.to

www.camera.to

FERDINANDO SCIANNA. La moda, la vita
La Castiglia, Saluzzo
Fino al 1° marzo 2026

https://fondazioneartea.org

Two great artists we must not forget, and whom the new generations absolutely must know. For those who love photography or simply, as I often say, love beautiful things, they must visit both, starting 2026 in the best possible way.

Enjoy your life, everyone!

Beatrice