GIOVANNI GASTEL
Giovanni Gastel was born in Milan in 1955. He belongs to the ancient Italian noble dynasty of Visconti. In 1975, he had an opportunity to work for the Christie’s auction house, where he learned patience and a meticulous attitude towards his work. Gastel reached the tipping point in his career in 1981, when he met Carla Ghiglieri, who became his agent and introduced him to the fashion world. His first still-life photographs were published in the magazine Annabella, and afterwards Gastel started collaborating with Vogue Italia. Later, thanks to a meeting with Flavio Lucchini, he also started to work with Mondo Uomo and Donna. At that point he began to be noticed by editors of the most prestigious fashion magazines, and his photos became famous abroad: at first in Paris and then around the world. Since then, Giovanni Gastel has worked with major designers, including Nicola Trussardi, Gianni Versace, and Maria Mandelli. At the same time, he joined the ‘Made in Italy’ movement supported by designers, editors, and photographers. Focused on the history of European art, Gastel tried to create something authentic in contrast with strict American traditions. In the mid-80s, he founded Gastel&Associati, an organization designed to support young photographers. He actively participates in events within the photography community. In 1996, Gastel became the president of the Italian Professional Photographers Association. He achieved ultimate recognition in 1997 when his first major retrospective took place in Milan, curated by influential Italian art historian Germano Celant. In 2002, Gastel received the equivalent of an Oscar in photography—La Kore, Oscar della Moda. Giovanni Gastel is aware of the elusiveness and ephemerality of fashion photography and uses methods from various traditions, from Renaissance to pop art, to create his illusions. He handles strict canons easily, allowing viewers to see how different our understandings of beauty can be and how it can be represented in an image. Works by Gastel are exhibited as a part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Photography in Brescia and at the Palazzo Riso Contemporary Art Museum in Palermo.
VOGUE SPAIN COVER. DECEMBER 1990
Fashion needs artists, according to Giovanni Gastel. To recreate images living in his fantasies, Gastel uses various methods of analogue photography: overlaying, blurriness, and fuzziness of silhouettes and partitioning into fragments and layers. When working with digital images, he pays the utmost attention to editing. The photograph made for the cover of the Spanish Vogue in 1990 is an atypical object d’art. At first, the author took a black-and-white shot of the model, and then he put colored stones on it and took another photograph of the result. ©Giovanni Gastel
TATIANA PATITZ (VOGUE SPAIN, MARCH 1990)
Portraits taken by Giovanni Gastel are a symbiosis of Renaissance style and pop art. The photographer believes that fashion aims at creating a perfect world of beauty, elegance, and eternal radiant youthfulness. This idea is reflected in the portrait of German model Tatjana Patitz, who looks at us with heart-piercing trustfulness but is full of mystery at the same time. One of the most famous photographs of the model was printed on the cover of the Spanish issue of Vogue in March 1990. ©Giovanni Gastel
VOGUE ESPANA 3, MARCH. 1990
60X80 CM FUFICOLOR CRYSTAL ARCHIVE PAPER DIGITAL TYPE DPII, MOUNTED ON DIBOND PANEL EDITION 1/5 PRINTED 2018 SIGNED ON LABEL BY THE AUTHOR
Giovanni Gastel uses various techniques to work with images: overlaying, pictorial editing methods, and partitioning of the frame into fragments and layers. This shot belongs to a series made for the Spanish edition of Vogue. Editors asked the photographer to work with the theme of light and present the colors of the season. Gastel decided to move away from the traditional approach of using fragments of colors and chose to work with nail polish as an auxiliary material. Initially, he made a portrait, and he then converted it into a black-and-white image adding the nail polish color splashes. In this way, he created many versions of one and the same shot and then re-shot the already existing images. This series, which makes reference to pop art methods, was published in the March issue of Vogue Spain in 1990. ©Giovanni Gastel
VOGUE ESPANA, 1991
60X80 CM FUJICOLOR CRYSTAL ARCHIVE PAPER DIGITAL TYPE DPII, MOUNTED ON DIBOND PANEL EDITION 1/5 PRINTED 2018 SIGNED ON LABEL BY THE AUTHOR
In this photograph made for the Spanish edition of Vogue, Giovanni Gastel plays with colors skillfully and adds a variety of accessories. In the source Polaroid image, the model was captured wearing a chic black feather neckpiece. However, the author considered it boring and decided to put the image of the neckpiece upon the photograph many times, thus achieving the ‘volume effect.’ ©Giovanni Gastel
“UNTITLED (METAMORPHOSIS 1), 2012”
60X80 CM FUJICOLOR CRYSTAL ARCHIVE PAPER DIGITAL TYPE DPII, MOUNTED ON DIBOND PANEL EDITION 1/5 PRINTED 2018 SIGNED ON LABEL BY THE AUTHOR
This photograph belongs to the series ‘Metamorphosis,’ which refers to Franz Kafka’s book. Gastel admits that these works characterize him well: ‘I generally like to recreate images, to play with them like a child.’ Just like many other images, this series was printed as large-format 20x25-cm Polaroid snapshots. Many years later, the original images were processed using digital technologies. ©Giovanni Gastel