A good-looking photo can please everyone, but it is often superficial like a beautiful sunset without any intention. A good shot tells something
It was a special moment: the meeting between Gianni Berengo Gardin and Carlo Borlenghi. Two great photographers who dealt with seemingly distant subjects: Gianni reported on life and news, while Carlo focused on regattas, but they often brushed against each other because of their common passion for boats and the sea. For Carlo, Gianni Berengo Gardin is one of the great masters, someone who inspired the start of his career, before becoming one of his absolute references. «I was looking at his pictures and I wanted to live his life”, Carlo says when he finally realizes, in front of Gianni Berengo's front door, that the big surprise I had asked him to reserve two hours for after a press conference was to meet him in his Milanese realm. Gianni Berengo Gardin's studio is a large attic where there are still enlargers for film printing, which he did himself for years, and an endless archive now run by his daughter Susanna. A kind of history of Italy and the world that goes far beyond the best-known or most published photos. But there are not only the shots, there is also a complete toolkit for building model boats, especially those sailing the Upper Adriatic, which slowly populated his homes along with many other objects and works of art collected on each trip. Besides their unerring eye for photography, one thing unites Gianni and Carlo: they both cannot swim. «I go boating in Camogli with my friends», Berengo says, «and I like to watch the stormy sea from the window of my house in Camogli. Its fury makes me feel like I'm on an island». His is a life that has seen a lot of sea, a lot of Liguria, Venice, yet of his work he says: «Actually for a large part of my life I was not very interested in photographing nature. I was more interested in the man, the woman, in short, the people. I liked to find out where they lived, where they worked, what their daily environment was. As I got older, I also discovered nature and enjoy growing plants in my garden. I always say that I am a professional photographer with the passion of an amateur. In this work, passion is everything. What's more, I get paid, or rather I used to get paid».
Among his best-known clients were Renzo Piano's Studio, Olivetti in the golden years of great design, and Pirelli. «I worked a lot for industry and design. Renzo Piano used to tell me, “Architects design, but the ones who build are the workers”. And I would always photograph the unfinished building, when it was still under construction. If the structure is finished, the design is completed, you no longer see the work behind it. I worked a lot for Olivetti, photographing all the new products. I still have typewriters, and I write to friends with a Lettera 22. I like to hear the old sound of the keys». Berengo distinguishes a lot between good photos and good, quality photos. «My friend Ugo Mulas taught me that. There are many beautiful sunsets that catch you eye but the good photo is something else. Beautiful, in short, can be trivial, a photo that everyone can take. A good photo tells a story, it is an intelligent photo. And it is good to remember one thing: photography is craftsmanship because you use your hands to print».
A concept that seems to clash with modern photography. Which has made digital and postproduction, two indispensable tools for making photographs. Berengo Gardin is not in tune with this technology and makes a subtle distinction that many people miss: «A photo constructed with Photoshop is no longer a photograph, it is an image. It's different and I'm fine with that as long as it's stated. I wanted a stamp on it that says 'photo not constructed with Photoshop.' I mean: if it's not stated it might not be real. And with the arrival of artificial intelligence, photography is over. It will be a huge danger». But does the camera have a future? «The camera is a fetish because you fall in love with it. The modern ones are all great however if you love only one: I love the Leica because it was the camera of the great masters, from Cartier Bresson onward. We had an idea of photography, a shot you take by yourself, almost secretly, and the machine to do all this was the Leica. Sebastiao Salgado was a great friend, I was crazy about his early photos, very natural, simple, they were real photographs. Then he turned his travels into expeditions to terrible places with 30 people in tow, from the cook to the interpreter. However, even he who used a lot of electronics always carried a reliable Leica M6 with him. Also because electronics are affected by humidity, heat, cold. I have a mechanical Leica from 1964 and I still only shoot film. I prefer it, because the negative is tangible and lasts over time. And with digital, the head forgets to think. It used to be that if you thought you were taking a good picture you would take two, three shots. Now even of a poor photo you take eighty. It used to be that you had to think, seize the moment because film would run out at some point».
