Scianna
Ferdinando (1943). Italian photographer. He was studying literature and philosophy at the University of Palermo at the time of his decisive meeting in 1963 with the writer Leonardo Sciascia, with whom he struck up a long and deep friendship. It was Sciascia who wrote the long introductory essay to Feste religiose di Sicilia (Religious Festivals in Sicily) in 1965, the book which won him the Nadar Prize with which the young Scianna was then able to enter the photography world. Even when he was little, he used to take photographs of people in his town, but it was not until many years later, in 2002, that he gathered these images together (with portraits of Jorge Luis Borges, Alberto Sordi, Maurizio Calvesi, Alberto Lattuada, Alfonso Gatto, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, all taken when they were visiting Sicily) in a book that accompanied an exhibition Quelli di Bagheria. Feeling encouraged by Feste religiose di Sicilia, he moved to Milan. In 1967, he was taken on at L’Europeo as a photo-reporter, then as a special correspondent, and, from 1974, as the magazine’s Paris correspondent. He stayed in Paris for 10 years, deepening his friendship with Henri Cartier-Bresson, who introduced him to Magnum where he became an associate member in 1987 and then a permanent member two years later. He continued his reportage work, publishing various books of which the most important were Les Siciliens and La villa dei mostri (The Villa of Monsters) in 1977, Kami (1988) — a documentary about the reality of life in a Bolivian village — and the monograph Le forme del Caos (Forms of Chaos). He got into fashion photography in 1987, at the suggestion of Dolce & Gabbana, for whom he did a few advertising campaigns, the first of which involved going behind the scenes of a runway show. He has been published in Grazia, Stern, Marie Claire, Vogue and Moda. In 1989 he produced Maglia (Knitwear), a volume about the Italian knitwear industry with texts by Guido Vergani.