Vasco Ascolini, Capitali della Cultura Fotografie 1980-2013

An Italian photographer is the only one , along with Cartier-Bresson, mentioned by Sir Ernst H. Gombrich, as too by Jacques Le Goff. His photographs were described as “exceptional” by F. Zeri and A. C. Quintavalle linked his poetic to the mise-en-scène of sculpture and the gestures of the Kabuki theatre. He is also a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic. Yet the phrase “No man is a prophet in his own land” fits him like a glove as he remains little known in Italy.

His name is Vasco Ascolini and he was born in Reggio Emilia in 1937. In the 1970s, Ascolini attended Quintavalle’s lectures at the University of Parma during the rediscovery of American photography and which was attracting figures such as Mulas, Veronesi, Chiaramonte and Ghirri. When he began working on a regular basis with the civic theatre of his home city, as well as taking commissions he embarked on a process of comparing the language of photography with that of the theatre and, acting in the wake of Mulas’ theoretical thoughts on this theme which led to his Verifications, Ascolini sanctioned its irreducibility. However, proposing a critique of the complex concept of “true theatre photography” expressed by Mulas as the closest point of contact between the two languages, because always inadequate, Ascolini completely recreated the on-stage event. His photographs of a Lindsay Kemp performance in 1979 were described by H. Gernsheim as “superbly expressionist” and marked the beginning of a totally personal and distinctive style.