Elisabetta Catalano

Priceless Testimony

МАММ presents ‘Precious Testimony’, an exhibition of works by celebrated Italian photographer Elisabetta Catalano (1941-2015), within the framework of the Х Moscow International Biennale of Fashion and Style in Photography 2017.
The exhibit is comprised of more than 120 images dating from 1964 to 2004. They include photos from the shooting of cult films and rehearsals for acclaimed theatre productions, as well as portraits of world-famous film stars, eminent directors, writers and artists, shots of performances, etc.
Elisabetta Catalano was part of the world she depicted and personally acquainted with the subjects of her photographs, many of whom were close friends and collaborators. The trust she inspired in her sitters allows us to see Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rudolf Nureyev, Charlotte Rampling, Andy Warhol, Alberto Giacometti, Joseph Kosuth, Fabio Mauri, Umberto Eco, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Philip Glass and many others in a relaxed setting, as they appeared to their circle of friends and accomplices. Catalano’s oeuvre is a view from within of fascinating events in Italian art and culture over a period of forty years, the precious testimony of a bygone era.
Elisabetta Catalano lived and worked in Rome. Her debut as a photographer came with the making of Federico Fellini’s ‘8½’, in which she played the sister of Anouk Aimée’s character. In breaks from filming she began to take snapshots with an old camera passed down from her father. Fellini was so impressed by Catalano’s pictures that he invited her to the shooting of other films, this time as photographer. The great director also posed for Elisabetta Catalano in her studio, and several of the images were reproduced on Fellini’s book covers.
The young photographer’s career flourished, and soon Catalano had an opportunity to work with influential international fashion magazines, including Italian, French and American Vogue, Il Mondo, L’Expresso, etc.
In the 1970s Elisabetta Catalano opened her own studio in Rome, where apart from portrait photography she began working with avant-garde artists. Her closest and most longstanding friendships forged a strong link with Fabio Mauri.
‘After my first portrait photographs posed in front of his pictures, producing an image somewhere between portrait and reportage, and after my feature on his work for the theatre, from the late 60s onwards I began recording his art performances...’ Elisabetta Catalano recalled in an interview.
Catalano also worked with many outstanding Italian and foreign artists: Gilbert & George, Joseph Beuys, Mario Schifano, Tano Festa, Joseph Kosuth, Francesco Clemente, Franco Angeli, Carla Accardi, Mario Merz, Mimmo Rotella, Jannis Kounellis, Alighiero Boetti, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Vettor Pisani, and many others.
‘Why did those whom I considered artists, and who then showed this to be true, accept me as one of their own? Maybe because of the way I perceived and appreciated them, because my depiction touched the secret core of the artistic personality in each one of them,’ Elisabetta Catalano once said. ‘Consequently these artists were the first to observe the human content in my images, the uniqueness of each individual that not even time could erase.’

MAMM would like to express special gratitude to Olga Strada, Director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow.