the photographer
Giuseppe Leone
In Leone’s photos don’t seek anger or civil pity nor the flash of metaphor; but instigated by the excellent craft, a glance accustomed to grasp the significant mimicry of the great human theatre.
Gesualdo Bufalino
Giuseppe Leone, Sicilian (lives and works in Ragusa), for over fifty years has been telling Sicily through images of people, places, parties, landscapes and architectures, almost always in white and black because “white and black is the interpretation of nature and its transformations, the glance that empties an image from every tinsel to give a meaning to what is the essence of what you see”.
As a narrator he has shared the deep experience of this land with authors who, like him, were able to grasp its beauty and contradictions – from Sciascia to Bufalino and Consolo – without ever falling into the stereotype:
“The camera is a tool that allows you to dialogue with what surrounds you”.
Then the photographer becomes not only an interpreter but also a researcher.
I am not interested in the striking scoop image, but in a conceptual photography, a photography of research, of immediacy, given that I work with an image grabbed instantly (……). When I come back from a photo shoot I am happy if in my basket there are at least three unforgettable images. The images to be such must have a great evocative and interpretative power”.
From the catalog “MAXXI Architecture.Photography”for the collection of the Museum MAXXI in Rome
Silvano Nigro writes about him:
“Leone is a narrator of Sicily, of its monuments, of its fairs, of its customs and of whole life through photographic images. Like an enchanted traveler, perhaps the last one around the Island.
A narrator who accompanied himself to Sciascia, Bufalino and Consolo and revealed to literature the truest Sicily, that of the people as that of the lived stone and landscape”.