About self-sufficient glamour and about who invented it (2nd part)

The most important conceptual and formal innovation of photography by Ghergo is the abandoning of picturesque iconography and the creation of a sophisticated yet sobre image, created with careful geometry, where light models the shapes of the subject; and it is this talent that doses the light that marks the boundary between ordinary portrait and the extraordinary “Ghergo’s Style. A style that as we said derives in part from the use of the photograph that the Hollywood film industry had already started to use for many years for the commercial promotion of famous divas or emerging outside of the theatre scenario; a system that was already in the production phase of a portrait photographer who was working on the same set of production of the film.

Therefore not only films were created in the studios, but also all the official images of the actors, which were then duly printed on postcards or formatted in the popular magazine thus creating that image myth that then declared the supremacy of American cinema in the world. And it is through this way that, mainly popular, glamour photography and fashion photography arrived in Italy between the end of the 1920s and 1930s; that is, in that stage where the fascist regime aimed at embodying in popular images the national way to modernism, founded on the values of Latin traditions, making ideal aesthetics a means of political propaganda and, according to them, creating a new Italian race.

The diffusion of this new aesthetic standard founded on glamour abrubtly entered in the national moviemaking industry in light of its immediate hold on mass populations; it is also thanks to the talent of a photographer such as Ghergo that the new style started to spread, a style that without being iconoclastic expresses modern style respecting tradition at the same time.

In his gallery there are also important institutional characters but it is definitely with the female subject that he expresses all his creative talent, where instead of rigid austere poses used at the time by the “jet-set” for their commemorative portrait Ghergo invests his noble clients with the allure of film divas, creating now inviting, now cold and aloof images, with shots of glimpses or exploiting fully the potential of geometric composition. A contrived charm in which his clients, especially the women, are only to happy to be trapped in

We know quite a bit about Ghergo before the birth of fashion photography and also how fundamental his works are for the eveolution of that specific sector. In fact his involvement is occasional and limited. The peculiarity lies in the fact that he uses a different language than usual; this makes the production of fashion images absolutely comparable to the rest of his style creations, pointing out even more, after all this time, his excellent talent.

Exhibition Arturo Ghergo – Fotografie 1930-1959. Roma – Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 8 Luglio 2012

Images © Archivio Ghergo