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12/12/2006

Elio Ciol

Cohen Amador Gallery, New York

Visioni

The Cohen Amador Gallery is pleased to announce “Visioni" an exhibition of black and white photography by one of Italy’s most celebrated photo-masters, Elio Ciol. A practitioner of photography for over fifty years, Ciol’s mastery of the medium extends beyond his adroit skill as a printer to the refined selectivity of his photographic eye which invigorates Italian architectural monuments, infuses emotion into endless landscapes and challenges photo literality with a range of subtle and overt imagery.

Born in 1929 in Casarsa, the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, Elio taught himself photography and began his career in the after-math of World War II’s devastation. In over half a century of production Ciol has photographed all over the world, visiting places as diverse as Palestine, Kenya, Yemen, Russia and China. With his camera, Ciol is able to transcend the bounds of sight and create new visions of the world. He has an alchemists eye, using light to steep a rural farm, a village street or ancient ruins with a dignity that often goes overlooked in the techno-whirl of the modern day. Though diverse, Ciol’s expansive oeuvre acts like a continuous project and is somewhat reminiscent of the depression era rural photography of Dorothea Lange or Walker Evans done for the Farm Security Administration. However, Ciol’s project is recuperative, bestowing a meditative grace upon varied and historically rich lands. His deep understanding of light has led him to experiment with infrared film and other techniques that further enrich his scenery, testifying to his life-long infatuation with the power of light.

Ciol has illustrated over one hundred and eighty books and monographs of his work have twice won the prestigious Krasner-Krausz awards for photographic books. Besides the historical value of Ciol’s work, he himself has helped make history during the fifties and sixties as a member of “La Gondola" the famous Venice Photography Club and he has received the accolades of British Art Critic Allistair Crawford. Now in his eighties, Ciol continues to photograph with a youthful and insatiable zeal.

Throughout his extensive career Ciol has won many awards including two prizes at the 1956 and 1957 New York Popular Photography International Competition. He has exhibited widely in Italy as well as internationally and his photographs are included in the collections of major institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography, the International Museum of Photography, The Art Museum at Princeton University, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Opening Reception: Wednesday December 13, 6-8 PM

The Cohen Amador Gallery
Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street on the 6th floor - New York
Gallery hours are 11 to 6 Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment

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