An anthological exhibition dedicated to the great Italian set photographer who witnessed the work of absolute Masters of cinema from Pasolini to Fellini, from Bertolucci to Almodóvar, from Dino Risi to Michelangelo Antonioni: 100 photographs from the immense archive of the Mimmo Cattarinich Association in Rome tell the story of cinema and its protagonists from the 1960s to today.

The faces of great actors and directors in the history of international cinema such as Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Anthony Quinn, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, Anna Magnani, Capucine, Roberto Benigni, Claudia Cardinale, Maria Callas, but also contemporary protagonists like Giuseppe Tornatore, Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Carlo Verdone, Claudia Gerini, Edoardo Leo, Natalie Portman, and Penélope Cruz are just some of the subjects of Mimmo Cattarinich’s photographs, to whom the Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum in Abano Terme dedicates its new exhibition. 100 photographs from the immense archive of the Mimmo Cattarinich Association in Rome, capable of telling the history of Italian and international cinema from the 1960s to the present day.

Cinema and photography, visual languages born almost simultaneously, have always shared and exchanged narrative techniques and aesthetic inspirations, generating that complex network of relationships that stimulates experimentation and creativity, a narrative dichotomy born from a natural dialogue in which imagination, inspiration, and subversion are acts of reciprocity and exchange. Photography documents cinema and reveals its hidden gesture, the stolen emotion, portraying in images moments of life behind the scenes: it is a complementary language capable of laying bare the subjects, revealing their mysteries and telling their vulnerability.

Looking at cinema through the lens of the set photographer is a complex, interdisciplinary experience organized around three major subjects that, unmasking cinematic fiction, reveal all the humanistic essence of this research: the representation of reality behind the scenes, the portrait of the actor within and beyond the scene, and the relationship between cinema and art.

What unites the subjects portrayed by Mimmo Cattarinich is the tension toward diversity: bodily alterations, challenging or exhibitionist attitudes, characteristics that contribute to making them real, transparent, and vulnerable. The photographer transposes dreams and emotions of individuals onto film, revealing their present reality and aspirations.

Cover: Maria Callas e Pier Paolo Pasolini sul set di Medea, 1969 © Associazione culturale Mimmo Cattarinich