Bio
Through photography Carmelo Bongiorno continues his existential research, capturing the mysterious essence of things: environments and people appear in a dreamlike state, within a metaphysical naturalism, as a transliteration of dreams into places, as arcane combinations. Photography transforms into thought.
Carmelo Bongiorno (Catania, 1960) is an Italian photographer and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. Since the 1980s he has stood among the emerging artists of his generation, and today he can count on 40 years of photographic research and countless exhibitions, books and publications.
Since 1984 he has deepened his path through exchanges and experiences with music, painting and video, consolidating the stylistic elements that over the years would come to define his work and bring him international recognition.
In 1989 he won the prestigious European Award for Photography and exhibited in France at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles.
He has published several books, including nine monographs, some with texts by his friend Franco Battiato (Luoghi Privati, L’isola intima, Bagliori, Carmelo Bongiorno photographies, Note di luce, Carmelo Bongiorno 1985-2010, Voci, Tagli, Aria/Respiro), receiving numerous awards, and he has held more than 80 exhibitions in the most prestigious venues.
His images are held in important collections. He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo and currently teaches in Catania, and he has led workshops across Europe.
His major exhibitions include a solo show at the Mois de la Photo à Paris, Teatro della visione with Wim Wenders and Ugo Mulas at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Les routes du lait at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, I Maestri della Fotografia at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the retrospective Carmelo Bongiorno 1985-2010 for the Brescia International Photography Biennial, and La Nuova Scuola di Fotografia Siciliana at the Galleria delle Stelline in Milan.
In 2018 he contributed several pages to the book Storia essenziale della Fotografia and was one of the artists in the exhibition Terre des îles at the Polka Galerie in Paris, alongside Sebastião Salgado, William Klein and Daidō Moriyama.
He then worked on new contemporary experiments and on the “TAGLI” project, an exhibition and book presented in 2020 at the Centro Internazionale di Fotografia in Palermo, directed by Letizia Battaglia, with texts by Mario Cresci and Franco Battiato.
In 2021 he published Aria/Respiro, a research project on Covid and respiratory diseases.
In 2022 he was director of photography for the documentary “La Sicilia non ha bisogno di lacrime” (Sicily Doesn’t Need Tears), presented in Rome at the Accademia dei Lincei; in 2024 he was one of the artists in the exhibition “Solo che amore ti colpisca” at the Real Albergo delle Povere in Palermo; and in 2025 he exhibited Supervisioni at the Fondazione Brodbeck.
In 2026 he won an award from the Italian Ministry of Culture for his project “Zerotremila”, on the theme “Landscape and rural architecture in Italy, a story to be told”.
That same year he was included in the book “Fotografi Siciliani del Novecento” (Sicilian Photographers of the Twentieth Century), edited by Monica Maffioli.