Ferdinando Scianna
started taking photographs in the 1960s while studying literature, philosophy
and art history at the University
of Palermo. It was then
that he began to photograph the Sicilian people systematically. Feste Religiose
in Sicilia (1965) included an essay by the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia,
and it was the first of many collaborations with famous writers.
Scianna moved to Milan in 1966. The
following year he started working for the weekly magazine L'Europeo, first as a
photographer, then from 1973 as a journalist. He also wrote on politics for Le
Monde Diplomatique and on literature and photography for La Quinzaine
Littéraire.
In 1977 he
published Les Siciliens in France
and La Villa Dei Mostri in Italy.
During this period Scianna met Henri Cartier-Bresson, and in 1982 he joined
Magnum Photos. He entered the field of fashion photography in the late 1980s.
At the end of the decade he published a retrospective, Le Forme del Caos
(1989).
Scianna returned
to exploring the meaning of religious rituals with Viaggio a Lourdes (1995),
then two years later he published a collection of images of sleepers - Dormire
Forse Sognare (To Sleep, Perchance to Dream). His portraits of the Argentinean
writer Jorge Luis Borges were published in 1999, and in the same year the
exhibition Niños del Mundo displayed Scianna's images of children from around
the world.
In 2002 Scianna
completed Quelli di Bagheria, a book on his home town in Sicily, in which he tries to reconstruct the
atmosphere of his youth through writings and photographs of Bagheria and the
people who live there.
Awards
1966 Prix Nadar (for Feste Religiose in
Sicilia), France
Exhibitions
2004 Pensar America III - Casa de América, Madrid,
Spain
2003 Ferdinando Scianna - Centre Cultural
Tecla Sala, Barcelona, Spain
2000 Altre Forme del Caos - Cantieri
Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo,
Italy
