Francesco Radino (Bagno a Ripoli, Florence, 1947) is one of the masters of contemporary Italian photography. Active for fifty years in many areas, from social investigation to the recording of the man-altered landscape, engaged in the elaboration of a vision based on the real but built on variegated visual stratifications, he is a figure of free creativity who works outside the box. Participating in the development of photography examining the contemporary landscape, he has over the years developed an intimate way of conceiving the image. His work therefore goes beyond the genre of the landscape, opening up to every aspect of the world, from nature, his great passion, to urban areas, from the human figure to objects and architecture, in continuous formal references that constantly affirm that there is only one world and its complexity cannot be looked at in terms of separate sectors. “The world of forms frees itself,” he writes, “and goes beyond the immediate meaning”, and linking images that are different to each other “there is a subtle but strong thread that speaks the language of closeness”, and these are “indicators of reality but they also allow us to glimpse the possibility of a way out of it”. Strengthened by a profound visual culture (his grandfather was a photographer, his father and mother both painters), and a frequenter of Oriental cultures, through photography Radino imagines a world of various figures, all worthy of being looked at and considered, in a continuous oscillation from nature to culture.

Milan, Fondazione Mudima, September - October 2019