La Castiglia di Saluzzo – 24 ORE Cultura : Ferdinando Scianna. La Moda, la Vita

The book Ferdinando Scianna. La Moda, la Vita is published by 24 ORE Cultura on the occasion of his exhibition in Saluzzo (Piedmont, Italy). Through 90 works, the exhibition explores for the first time one of the defining chapters in the Sicilian photographer’s career: fashion. Ferdinando sent us the following text :

MODA

I came across fashion photography by chance.

In 1987, the designers Dolce & Gabbana—still almost unknown—phoned me. They had seen some photographs of Sicily that one of their clients had said were mine. Domenico Dolce is Sicilian like me; they were inspired by the Sicilian woman and asked me to make the photographs for their next catalogue.

I had never taken fashion photographs. But that was exactly what they wanted.

Curiosity seduced me and I accepted.

Having never done any, I approached it with the pure instincts of a photojournalist.

They showed me two small photos of models, and I immediately chose Marpessa.

There was no money at all. There was no make-up artist or hairdresser either. Marpessa did her own make-up and hair.

A very happy simplicity.

But I was in Sicily, the place of my childhood and early youth, where I had taken many photographs that had already become books important to me. The model—very beautiful—was worried by my complete lack of experience, yet intrigued by my approach, which was unusual for her; she immediately entered my story, like a wonderful, convinced actress.

By letting her mingle with the hazards of small events—lights, shadows, architecture—I traced, as in a lucid dream, the formation within my consciousness of the feeling of womanhood in the very environment where it had been born.

Not fashion photographs, then—or not only—but at the same time social reportage and a joyful autobiographical narrative.

That catalogue, and the one that followed, were such a clamorous and unexpected success that they changed the course of my professional life and perhaps even, a little, the trajectory of Dolce & Gabbana’s enterprise.

A story truly born of chance: imagine that years later we discovered that the Sicilian photographs they had sought me out for were not mine.

One could say that chance ruled my adventure as a fashion photographer. But isn’t it so for all the photography I have practiced? Isn’t it so for life?

From then on, for almost eight years, fashion photography was almost central to my work as a photographer. I don’t think there were many major Italian or international newspapers for which I was not asked to shoot fashion.

It was an unexpected experience, but extremely rich—and also very entertaining—that helped me reconsider many ideas about my work and about myself, and about life’s hazards.

I still think that my fashion photographs are the children of my passion as a reporter. In fact, I think there is no difference at all between the two approaches. Through fashion, through models, I tried to introduce an alien element,

I place a little pebble inside the oyster of life in the hope that it will produce a pearl.

Strange things happen. Sometimes a very powerful contradiction arises, which paradoxically makes the two opposing elements read more explicitly. Other times one gets sought-after or unexpected resonances.

The only thing in which I believe I tried a different approach is that I do not use people—or the place where I insert the model or the male model—as a background, but as co-protagonists of the image. I tell stories.

Claude Ambroise, in his extraordinary text that introduces my book Altrove, reportage di moda, already identified in my earliest photographs of religious festivals in Sicily the awareness that clothing is fundamental in every human rite. And there are others, earlier still.

To tell the truth, I knew almost nothing about fashion photography before chance led me to do it, and I know very little after having done it for many years. I didn’t look at fashion magazines before; I didn’t look at them in the years when I was doing fashion; and I continued not to look at them once I stopped.

I have always looked, instead, at the fashion photographs of the great authors as I looked at others: as good, or bad, or great photographs.

Perhaps I never really understood fashion, and fashion photographs made in abstract situations do not excite me—even though some are extraordinary.

The fashion photography that interested me and still excites me is what photographers such as Martin Muncacsi, Frank Horvat, Guy Bourdin, William Klein, and of course Helmut Newton have done—creator of a universe inhabited by sidereal goddesses, prophetically surrounded by little men in retreat.

And a few others—some very great—whom I admire, but who, it seems to me, have little to do with my idea of photography.

Horvath, for example, I discovered as a fashion photographer only after realizing that the definition of fashion-reportage had been coined for his images decades before the same formula was used for mine. And I discovered a master who later became a great friend.

I have never taken fashion photographs in a studio, for example.

In different situations the same dress, on the same person, can look wonderful, ridiculous, provocative, grotesque; it exists as a function of its relationship with the world, whereas if you isolate it, you do not test it against reality—you treat it as an abstract aesthetic object in space.

Models, it seems to me, are seen more as mannequins than as women—a kind of still life, sometimes sublime; but as a reporter I have photographed everything: landscapes, animals, people, even objects.

I love to play matador with chance.

Someone said that I have had a reticent attitude toward my fashion photographs.

It is true that, at first, I felt a little guilty about my role as a director, which contradicted the fundamental—indeed fundamentalist—rule of the reporter’s non-intervention in the unfolding of life.

Guilty, but happy nonetheless.

I do not believe at all that my reticence is real. In 1989, when I presented my portfolio for my definitive entry into Magnum, I brought both my book Kami, about the miners of the Bolivian Andes, and my series on Marpessa.

At the time it was considered a real provocation, and I was told that the discussion was rather heated when it came time to vote on my acceptance into the agency. Times have changed now, but back then many considered it a scandal.

When I look at those photographs, I find the stylistic consonance with the Sicilian ones—and above all with those of the Bolivian miners—obvious; they were essentially made in the same year.

With my fashion photographs I published two books, Marpessa, un racconto, born from the first experience and then consciously constructed, and Altrove, reportage di moda, where I brought together about a hundred images made in subsequent years.

Even in the titles, I wanted to emphasize the narrative nature of those photographs.

Many have said that my fashion photographs are perhaps among the most original things I have done as a photographer. I do not see them as different, but perhaps they are right.

For many years I have thought that I should make a book entirely devoted to my way of doing fashion. I circled around it for a long time, gathering and continuing to select the images that correspond most precisely to that specificity.

I have never done a major exhibition of my fashion photographs. In the end, the opportunity arrived. And moreover, to my pride, at the same time as a parallel exhibition of Helmut Newton.

Ferdinando Scianna

Exhibition
Ferdinando Scianna. La Moda, la Vita
Until March 1, 2026
La Castiglia
Piazza Castello, 2
12037 Saluzzo CN, Italy

Book
Ferdinando Scianna. La Moda, la Vita
24 ORE Cultura
Hardback
24 x 31.5 cm
80 images
144 pages
ISBN 9788866489399
€48.00
www.24orecultura.com