| Marco Anelli was born in Rome in 1968. He began his career in Italy as a photojournalist for motor racing sports. In 1992 he moved to Paris to specialize in black and white photography and its printing techniques. He also collaborated with the agency Presse/Sport (L'Equipe). In 1995 he began what has become a signature aspect of his work: photographic projects that evolve slowly over long periods of time, developed through an extended engagement with his subject. He collaborated with the Vatican to make a series of photographs of the interior and sculptures of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, made over several years, working exclusively with the natural light as it fell on the sculptures and the architecture at different times of day. A book, ‘Shadow and Light in St. Peter’s’ (Silvana Editoriale), was published in 1998, followed by an exhibition shown in galleries from Milan to New York. |
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In 1997 he accepted a commission from the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, photographing the musicians, conductors and composers participating in its concert seasons of classical music, in a series of intimate portraits captured during private moments of rehearsal. This long co-operation produced exhibitions and two publications, the first titled ‘Imagined Music’ (Federico Motta Publisher). His next projects focused on architectural sites, including the modernist architecture of the Milan Fair, and the restoration of the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica. He participated in this latter project together with Mimmo Jodice and Olivo Barbieri, and the reportage produced by all three photographers was published in ‘Stone through Time’ (Silvana Editoriale). In 1998 he began a new photographic project on the world of soccer, photographing soccer players during major Italian championships. The images, capturing moments of intense speed, emotion, energy, and physical skill, were published in the book ‘Football’, and won prizes from Fuji and Canon in 2001. In 2000, he created a poetic study of human relationships seen through other living creatures. The project, titled ‘About You 2000’, was published in a book which won the Mario Giacomelli Memorial Award in 2001. In the following year he began to develop a new chapter of the project, which became ‘About You 2004’. From 2005 to 2008 he taught photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In 2007 he began ‘Seven Chapters’, a project based on the exploration of the human body. The third chapter, dedicated to the skin, took as its subject the scars of the artist Marina Abramovic, with whom he collaborates. In the same year architecture became the subject again, in a new project titled ‘Tetris’, which portrayed the materials and structures of building sites in an unusual way, through abstract images. In 2010 he undertook a major photographic project at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in which he photographed each of the 1,545 visitors who took part in Marina Abramovic's three month durational performance ‘The Artist is Present’. His portraits captured the many different moments of intense emotional connection that took place between the public and the artist. In 2011, the book ‘In the Shadow of the Cathedral’ (Contrasto Publisher) brought together the results of another durational photographic project. The restoration of Milan Cathedral, observed through his lens from the scaffold erected for the restoration work, is depicted through a visual dialogue between the architecture and the sculptures of the iconic symbol of Milan, and the life surrounding it. ‘Gestures of the Soul’ (Peliti Associati) is his latest photographic book, bringing together images from a seven year period of work at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, in the empty concert hall during rehearsals. The photographs articulate classical music as seen through the gestures and expressions of its greatest interpreters. He is currently working on three new long-term photographic projects in New York. One project explores the character of the artist and their work as expressed in their studio, including the studios of Shirin Neshat, Vito Acconci, Anne Collier, Urs Fischer, Joan Jonas, Julian Schnabel, Andreas Serrano, and others. Another captures the construction of the new Whitney Museum of American Art building, designed by Renzo Piano in the Meatpacking district of New York; and the third turns the lens away from the players in sport to focus on the strong emotional reactions of the public, in soccer, football and baseball stadiums across Italy and America. |
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