Franco Fontana (born 9 December 1933) is an Italian photographer. He is best known for his abstract color landscapes.
Biography
Franco Fontana was born in 1933 in Modena. He started taking photographs in the 1950s when he was working as a decorator in a furniture showroom.[1] In 1961 he joined a local amateur club in Modena. The experience would be a turning point in his career, and Fontana went on to have his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Società Fotografica Subalpina, Turin[1] and at the Galleria della Sala di Cultura in Modena in 1968. Since then he has participated in more than 400 group and solo exhibitions.[2]
Fontana's first book, Skyline, was published in 1978 in France by Contrejour and in Italy by Punto e Virgola with a text by Helmut Gernsheim.
Fontana is the art director of the Toscana Fotofestival.[3]
He has received numerous awards, such as the 1989 Tokyo Photographer Society of Japan - The 150 Years of Photography - Photographer Award.[citation needed]
Style and critical reception
Fontana is especially interested in the interplay of colors.[4] His early innovations in color photography in the 1960s were stylistically disruptive. According to art critic Giuliana Scimé, Fontana "destroyed all the structures, practices, and technical choices within the Italian tradition."[5][6]
Fontana uses 35mm cameras, and as noted by Iwan Zahar, deploys distant viewpoints with telephoto lenses to flatten contours in a landscape of crops and fields into bands of intense, saturated colour.[7] This is an effect that Franco Lefèvre has described as 'dialectical landscapism'.[1] Of his use of colour in his 2019 retrospective exhibition Sintesi ('Synthesis') at Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, curator Diana Baldon has observed;
“His bold geometric compositions are characterised by shimmering colours, level perspectives and a geometric-formalist and minimal language...By adopting this approach during the 1960s, Fontana injected a new vitality into the field of creative colour photography for then multicolour was not in fashion in art photography...The way Fontana shoots, dematerialises the objects photographed, which loose three-dimensionality and realism to become part of an abstract drawing”.[8]
Aside from the rural landscape Fontana has applied his graphic sensibility to other subjects: city architecture, portraiture, fashion, still-life and the nude.
Fontana's photographs have also been used as album cover art for records produced by the ECM Records jazz label.
Franco Fontana, a cura di Giovanna Calvenzi, testo di Massimo Mussini, Federico Motta Editore, Milan, 2003
Paesaggio, with Mario Giacomelli, text by Federico Zeri, Edizioni Gribaudo, Asti, 2003
Antiche penombre in controluce, Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, Modena, 2003
Retrospettiva, text by Allan D. Coleman e Giuliana Scimé, Edizioni Logos, Modena, 2003
Appia Regina viarum, text by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Trnsmec, 2003
Paesaggi con Andrea Micheli Galleria degli animali, text by Renato Barilli e Giorgio Celli, Mazzotta Editore, Milan, 2005
Appunti siciliani, text by Liborio Termine e Gianni Riotta, Federico Motta Editore, Milan, 2006
La via Emilia, text by Francesco Guccini e Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Atlante, Bazzano, 2006
Il tempo fissato. Pietre e colori a Morgantina, text by Vincenzo Consolo e Liborio Termine, Ed. Università Kore, 2006
Alassio, Comune di Alassio, 2008
Fabbriche di sassi, with Luigi Ottani, Anna Prandi, Edizioni Artestampa, Modena, 2008
Modena effetto notte, reloaded, Ed. italiana e inglese, Edizioni Artestampa, Modena, 2009
Paesaggi a confronto, Edizioni Artestampa, Modena, 2010
Donne, Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, Modena, 2010
Grandi autori, Fotografia contemporanea, edited by Claudio Pastrone, Fiaf, Turin, 2011
L’anima un paesaggio interiore, text by Giorgio Faletti e Liborio Termine, 24 Ore Cultura, Gruppo 24 Ore, Milan, 2011
Skyline, texts by Claude Nori and Francesco Zanot, Contrasto due, Rome, 2013
Franco Fontana. A life of photos, Italian and English editions, Postcart, Rome, 2013
Bellezze Disarmoniche, Artestampa, 2014
Franco Fontana - FULL COLOR, Ediz. Marsilio, Venice, 2014
Vita Nova, Ediz. Sabrina Raffaghello, 2014
Vista d'Autore, Canon-EXPO, 2015
Terra Alma et Amara, 100 numbered copies signed with a poem by Valerio Massimo Manfredi, 2015
La Fotografia Creativa, Mondadori, Milan
Italia a Scatti Il Racconto di Grandi Fotografi, Electa, Milan
References
^ abcColombo, Cesare., Bignardi, Irene, Zannier, Italo, and Fratelli Alinari. Museo Di Storia Della Fotografia. Italy, the One and Only : A Century of Photography, 1900-2000 / Curated by Cesare Colombo ; Texts, Irene Bignardi, Cesare Colombo, Italo Zannier ; with the Collaboration of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Central Office of Cultural Affairs. Firenze: Alinari, 1998. Print.
^Scimé, G., & Dau, M. (1997). Notes on Italian Photography: Part II: From Futurism to the Present. On Paper, 1(4), 32-35.
^Duddy, N. (1991). A View on landscape photography. Doctoral dissertation, Bloemfontein: Central University of Technology, Free State.
^Zahar, I. (2015). Photo Exemplar Classification: The Integration of Photographic History into Photographic Technique. In International Colloquium of Art and Design Education Research (i-CADER 2014) (pp. 161-172). Springer, Singapore.
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