Gabriele Basilico

In this collection of photos, Gabriele Basilico continues his investigation of the industrial apparatuses that have changed the skin of cities. After his famous series on the factories of Milan, Basilico focused on European ports seen as the perimeter points of the continent – in his words, “the face to the overseas of this old Europe.” Within a decade, Basilico portrayed the ports of the cities of Bilbao, Antwerp, Hamburg, Dieppe, Trieste and Rotterdam, among others. These large landscape photographs encapsulate in a single shot totalising visions where Basilico gathers all the essential elements of the forms and contents of this world, heir to the industrialisation and to the techniques born in the 19th century. These tangible yet also metaphysical places, profoundly real but veined with abstraction, once again recount the boundaries, the caesuras, the evolution of European cities on the edges of the seas, whose liquid borders that, while protecting Europe, spurred it to overcome them.

Gabriele Basilico (1944–2013, Milan, Italy). He studied architecture at the Milan Polytechnic, and already as a student devoted himself to photography, exploring urban forms, their developments and identity, tracing the changes taking place in the post-industrial landscape. Considered one of the masters of contemporary photography, he has won many prizes, and his works are part of important Italian and international public and private collections. Milano ritratti di fabbriche (1978–80) his first survey on industrial suburbs, was presented at PAC, Milan in 1983. In 1991 he participated in a mission to Beirut, a city devastated by a 15-years civil war. In 2012 he took part in the 13th Venice Biennale Architettura. Over the years, he has produced numerous documentation projects in Italy and abroad, which have generated exhibitions and books, including the Porti di mare (1990) series selected for the L’Europa non cade dal cielo.