The summer of 1994 was an extreme summer in Italy. From Rimini to the Marina di Pietrasanta, the thermometers shot up to close to 40 degrees, a climatic anomaly that, however, gave the measure of the social temperature of the moment, heated by the loss of the World Cup (against Brazil) and the first vacation of Silvio Berlusconi enthroned prime minister. The country sounded like spaghetti house (Corona’s Rhythm of The Night was competing for number one with Whigfield’s Saturday Night) and he went out dancing wildly in Armani Jeans.
A perfect breeding ground for an experienced photojournalist from the Report agency to understand that if he wanted to testify to what was happening among his countrymen, it was best to redirect his gaze towards the mass spectacle offered by discos, clubs, swimming pools and beaches, there where the hypnotized crowds celebrated that imaginary change in which the Clean Hands process concluded. Since then, Massimo Vitali (Como, 1944) has been the photographer of summer normality.
“In a bathing suit, everyone is just as helpless and under scrutiny. Photographing a crowded square in winter would be boring, without charm. It would prevent me from understanding who the real people are, ”concedes Vitali, who left current affairs reporting and cinema (he also made a career as a cameraman) because he was curious to know who had voted for il Cavaliere. He found them mostly carefree on the shores of the Ligurian Sea, back and forth in bikinis, splashing around in skimpy speedos.
The rest is already the history of photographic anthropology, a cross-sectional portrait of society in panoramic format that is part of the contemporary art collections of the Guggenheim in New York, the Pompidou in Paris or the Reina Sofía in Madrid. “What really interests me is not the look or appearance, but the behavior of people in public spaces”, he explains regarding his view of italianità.
Vitali has found on the beaches the field of action for his study of human nature, which he prefers to observe from above and in the distance, without disturbing. On a homemade platform, which lifts him up to five meters above landscape and countrymanship, he has accounted for “cosmetic deceit, sexual innuendo, deceptive appearances of wealth and commodified leisure” for three decades. Now, the crowds no longer seduce him, or not so much.
“I have dealt a lot with crowds in these years of work, although that does not seem so important to me. A small group can also give rise to a significant situation, which is why sometimes I prefer to photograph fewer people, but in a more interesting setting”, he refers to some images in which the environment/habitat has been gaining prominence. “What I don’t do is look specifically for beautiful landscapes. In fact, I don’t like pretty landscapes. My thing is boring places where interesting things happen ”, she adds.
The point is that those sandy beaches with their hedonistic Mediterranean glow –with which she reached the cover of Vogue Italia in September 2021– are never more the scene of desolation and even death. “Every time I go to a beach I can’t help but think about what could happen at any moment, and what the reaction of the bathers would be if they were direct witnesses to the immigration drama that is shaking our coasts,” she notes.
Vitali, who in 2015 photographed a refugee camp in Vienna at the request of Time magazine, however, does not feel that it is his professional concern: “On the one hand, because moving equipment is not an easy task, and on the other because my images are about normality and I’m not sure I want to photograph a dramatic event either”.
Between the end of June and the beginning of July, the photographer found himself again in the scent of crowds, invited by the Kappa FuturFestival in Turin to document the tide of young people that shakes the Parco Dora in the city, to the rhythm of electronic music from dance. “I was already in 2018, but this time I have decided to look for a different, more marginal perspective”, he tells of an experience that fascinates him especially due to the generational clash.
“As a society we have changed a lot, very quickly and dramatically, in millions of unimportant details that are important to me and are what my work documents,” he concludes. “If it has been for better or worse, I will not be the one to judge it.”
