‘Silence, lights, and a situation of expectation’: influences and themes in Gabriele Basilico's oeuvre

Abstract

If you think of Gabriele Basilico's photography, it is impossible not to imagine empty cities of a silently destroyed civilisation. For instance, in Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche 1978/1980, an exemplar of Basilico's visual research, viewers can acutely experience what a deserted suburban street in Milan looks like during a hot summer day. This theme of uninhabited urban industrial space is a leitmotiv of his celebrated work. During his lifetime, Basilico's search for a photographic documentation of such experience had translated into images of empty physical spaces and abandoned factories. He gave the experience of being in such quintessentially urban conditions of abandonment and dereliction a new aesthetic value and constructed a visual poetry of magic suspension on the absence of human beings, such as that which he had captured in the empty Milanese suburbs in the early morning light. This paper unravels Basilico's choice to interpret virtually empty urbanscapes, and traces Giorgio Casali's influence on Basilico within the wider culture of Italian architectural photography.