Romano Cagnoni - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Romano Cagnoni

Encyclopedia

Romano Cagnoni is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

) is an Italian

Italian people

The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

photographer who spent most of his professional life based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

Biography

Romano Cagnoni used to photograph sculptures in the small town of Pietrasanta, Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

, famous for its sculpture studios, till in 1958 he moved to London, where he lived 30 years. He began to work as a freelance photographer contributing to different European magazines. He worked with Simon Guttmann (a founder of modern photojournalism

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism...

with Robert Capa

Robert Capa

Robert Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War...

, Felix Mann

Felix Mann

Felix Mann is a German-born acupuncturist. He devised the system known as Scientific Acupuncture and is the founder and past-president of the Medical Acupuncture Society...

, Kurt Hutton

Kurt Hutton

Kurt Hutton, born Kurt Hübschmann , was a German-born photographer who pioneered photojournalism in England.-Life:Beginning his career with the Dephot agency in Germany, he migrated to England in 1934 and worked for Weekly Illustrated....

, Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...

, etc.).

In 1963 he met the artist Berenice Sydney

Berenice Sydney

Berenice Sydney , born Berenice Frieze, was a prolific English artist who produced a substantial body of work from 1966 until her death in 1983. Her oeuvre consists of paintings on canvas and paper, drawings, prints, children's books, costume design and performance...

whom he married in 1970.

He was the first western non-communist photographer to be allowed in North of Vietnam

North Vietnam

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...

with the distinguished British journalist James Cameron

James Cameron (journalist)

Mark James Walter Cameron was a prominent British journalist, in whose memory the annual James Cameron Memorial Lecture is given.-Early life:...

. Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...

, Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

during the civil war, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

, Chechnya

Chechnya

The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...

, Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

, were the site of his works about forbidden stories that Cagnoni was able to photograph: amongst them, the Soviet Army

Soviet war in Afghanistan

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...

in Afghanistan in 1980, and in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

(1981), Argentinian

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

airports during the Falklands war

Falklands War

The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...

in 1982. He was the first photographer to set up a studio on the front line to photograph warriors during the fighting in Chechnya in 1995.

In 1968 he won the Overseas Press Club

Overseas Press Club

The Overseas Press Club of America was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member...

Award, for his Nigerian civil war reportage published in "Life Magazine", the German Art Directors’ Club bronze medal for documenting with a large format camera the war destruction in former Yugoslavia, and many Italian prizes. He returned to live in his home town in Italy, from where he travels worldwide for his work.

Cagnoni has held 43 solo exhibitions, 43 group shows and retrospectives worldwide. The last exhibition, at Arengario Palace in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, bore the title "ChiaroScuro

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....

", which, beyond the literal meaning, hints to "humour and darkness": these photographs show the darkness of war and sometimes the humour of every day life. Cagnoni feels that these opposites are the essence of his work.

The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...

former editor Harold Evans

Harold Evans

Sir Harold Matthew Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism...

, in his book Pictures on a Page: Photo-Journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing, mentions Cagnoni as one of the most famous photographers in the world with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt was an influential British photographer and photojournalist known for his high-contrast images of British society and his distorted nudes and landscapes.-Career and life:...

, Don McCullin

Don McCullin

Donald McCullin, FRPS CBE is an internationally known British photojournalist, particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban strife...

and Eugene Smith

W. Eugene Smith

William Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs.- Life and work :...