Mario Giacomelli, Italian photographer and photojournalist in the genre of humanism, born in 1925 in the sea-port town of Senigallia in the Marche region of Italy.
Only nine when his father died, at 13, the boy left high school to work as a typesetter and spent his weekends painting and writing poetry. After the horrors of World War II, from 1953 he turned to the more immediate medium of photography and joined the Misa Group, formed that year. After pre-war years dominated by a Pictorialist aesthetic promoted by the Fascist government, these artists enjoyed experimenting with form. He wandered the streets and fields of post-war Italy, inspired by the gritty Neo-Realist films of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, and influenced by the renowned Italian photographer Giuseppe Cavalli, founder of Misa, and developing a style characterized by radical compositions, bold cropping and stark contrasts.
