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The 2015 ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Mario Carbone for excellence achieved, through the medium of photography, in the representation and documentation of historical events while addressing a broad spectrum of social and political issues and exploring the world of art.

Born in San Sosti (Cosenza) in 1924, Mario Carbone discovered the secrets of photography through a long apprenticeship in his native Calabria and in Milan, at Elio Luxardo's studio but not only.

In 1955, he moved to Rome and began his career in cinematography, first as a cameraman, then as a director of photography and later as a director of documentaries. He thus found himself collaborating with other directors, including Libero Bizzarri, Romano Scavolini and Raffaele Andreassi. For the latter he took care of the photography of I vecchi (1959), which earned him his first Nastro d'argento.

In 1960, he accompanied Carlo Levi on his journey to Lucania to photograph the places of the writer's forced stay that became the unforgettable setting for Christ Stopped at Eboli. Carbone took around four hundred photographs, some of which illustrated his Viaggio in Lucania con Levi, published in 1980. Also in 1960, he shot his first short film, Inquietudine, starring Franco Angeli.

During the 1960s, he made a series of documentaries with a neo-realist imprint, initially focusing on generational conflicts, of which Il muro dei giovani (1961), La città ci è nemica (1962) and Capelli fuori legge (1962) are testimony. In 1963 he collaborated, as cameraman and director, with Cesare Zavattini on the production of the investigative film I Misteri di Roma. In 1964 he documented the abandonment of feudal lands by Calabrian nobles with Stemmati di Calabria, which earned him a second Silver Ribbon. In the same year, he shot two films produced by Eni in India with Giuseppe Ferrara, and at the same time photographed glimpses of life in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and New Delhi, and in the rural villages more and less distant from these cities. Some of his photographs have been reproduced in Parallels. India-Italy in the 1960s published by Gangemi in 2006. In 1966, Carbone turned his attention back to Italy in shedding light on the condition of peasant labour, witnessed in Dove la terra è nera. In 1967 he tackled the theme of disability and architectural barriers with Anche noi parliamo, which was followed by Alla fine dell'arcobaleno (1968). Again in 1967 he won the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale with Firenze, novembre 1966, an extraordinary visual testimony of the flood, with texts by Vasco Pratolini read by Giorgio Albertazzi.

In 1970, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of Nouveau Réalisme, Carbone went to Milan and filmed performances in which several exponents of the movement took part, including Christo, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Cesàr, Armand Pierre Fernandez (Arman), Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, and Pierre Restany. Also in 1977, on the occasion of the International Week of Performance at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, he filmed interventions by Marina Abramovic and Frank Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay), Vincenzo Agnetti, Luca Patella, Hermann Nitsch, Luigi Ontani and Vettor Pisani. Shortly afterwards, he founded the film production company DARC and realised the popular series Attraverso l'arte moderna (1979) and Artisti allo specchio (Artists in the mirror), which continued until the 1990s with the participation of artists such as Enrico Baj, Mimmo Paladino, Carla Accardi, Mario Schifano and others. At the end of the last century, Carbone was forced to close DARC, but he kept the archive of his photography and film production, which is currently being reorganised.

www.archiviomariocarbone.com