Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico was born in Milan 1944 and sadly passed away in 2013.
His first shots date back to the early 1970s, after graduating in Architecture. The city and the cityscape were his areas of interest and research. He published many books all along his successful career; among them, some are really outstanding.
“Porti di mare” (“Seaports”) is my absolute favorite.
These photographs, taken from 1982 to 1988, show seaports all over Europe: Rotterdam, Barcelona, Genoa, Hamburg …
The perspective is wide and the use of the large format, combined with an extraordinary printing quality, allows to focus on every single detail that make up the images.
Basilico, whose name is generally associated to architecture photography, responds in a brief note to the eternal dilemma:
“I never believed that a frame could tell the world…
I always felt the need to tell a lot, everything, in an attempt of being concrete…
For these European seaports I have wandered from one place to another, trying to capture differences and similarities. It’s a partial, personal journey…”
