Photography

Like a taster interprets a wine through the clearness of the glass, so the eye of the photographer interprets reality through the camera lens.

sculpture

photography

Photography

Eleven of the world’s most famous photographers freely expressed their relationships with wine and its traditions, creating an extraordinary illustrated volume.

This original adventure into photography, and life, began in the 1980s when Maurizio Zanella asked an internationally renowned photographer to interpret the world of wine at Ca’ del Bosco. Following him came all the others who, through their lenses, interpreted this fascinating world as they saw it. For Ca’ del Bosco photography became a third artistic expression, after wine and sculpture.

And so began an extraordinary story, recounted by a rich and variegated collection of photographs revealing, on the one hand, the sensitive eye of the photographer and on the other a reality composed of landscapes, faces, gestures and situations that speak of the context from which they come: Ca’ del Bosco. The photograph collection became an exhibit held at La Triennale di Milano from October 20 to November 7, 2004: it was mounted by Davide Manfredi who selected the 171 shots, afterwards published by Skira in the homonymous book 11 Photographers 1 Wine.

11 Fotografi, 1 vino

Eleven of the world’s most famous photographers freely expressed their relationships with wine and its traditions, creating an extraordinary illustrated volume: Franco Bonetti, Franco Fontana, Georg Gester, Ralph Gibson, Eikoh Hosoe, Mimmo Jodice, William Klein, Don McCullin, Helmut Newton, Ferdinando Scianna and Alice Springs.

"Thirty years ago, Ca' del Bosco began a long and extraordinary dialogue with the greatest interpreters of Italian and international photography. Authors such as Helmut Newton, Georg Gerster, William Klein, Franco Fontana among the others.

To each of these masters I had asked them to interpret the world of Ca' del Bosco.I gave them complete freedom, but with one condition: I did not want to show a single label. I wanted much more, I wanted the beauty of our land, the times, and the gestures of our work to explain the uniqueness of Ca' del Bosco on their own."

Maurizio Zanella introduces the project "11 Fotografi, 1 vino"

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From this intense experience an important book was born, "11 Photographers, 1 Wine" published by Skira in 2004 and now available again in bookstores. Every month, the life, style, and memories of a master and, inspired by their photographs, we will discover a word that is very dear to us."

Flavio Bonetti

Born in Brescia on March 9, 1956, he began his photographer’s career in 1981. He has worked with European publishing houses in the spheres of architecture and fashion, has filmed two documentaries and had his photographic explorations exhibited at the Galleria Monica de Cardenas, the Miart show, ArtBasel and the Saatchi Gallery in London.

"Flavio Bonetti was and still is so talented that he deserves the cover of the book '11 photographers, 1 wine', in which we have collected the works of all the masters who have interpreted the world of Ca' del Bosco. The cover, indeed, depicts a bottle, or so it seems, but it is much more, it is the sunlight that ripens our grapes, and the silent darkness of our cellars, it is the power of nature, its feminine body, and the seduction of wine, a masculine noun."

Maurizio Zanella introduces the work of photographer Flavio Bonetti, author of the cover of the book '11 photographers, 1 wine’."

"These are veins, but they could be roads: when I look at this vine leaf, photographed by Flavio Bonetti, I think of all the paths I have traveled on my motorcycle, Enduro to be precise. The journey into the world of Ca' del Bosco began for me as a boy, participating in races held in Franciacorta."

Maurizio Zanella, the story, the memories.

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Flavio Bonetti was and still is so talented that he deserves the cover of the book '11 photographers, 1 wine', in which we have collected the works of all the masters who have interpreted the world of Ca' del Bosco. The cover, indeed, depicts a bottle, or so it seems, but it is much more, it is the sunlight that ripens our grapes, and the silent darkness of our cellars, it is the power of nature, its feminine body, and the seduction of wine, a masculine noun.

Maurizio Zanella introduces the work of photographer Flavio Bonetti, author of the cover of the book '11 photographers, 1 wine’."

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Franco Fontana

Born in Modena on December 9, 1933, his work has been published in more than forty books and displayed at approximately four hundred exhibits.

He has shot numerous ad campaigns and participated in many workshops and conferences. In 1989 he received an award from the Tokyo Photography Society of Japan. He is currently art director of the Toscana Foto Festival in Massa Marittima and of Fotoincontri at San Felice sul Panaro.

“The French say that to make a great wine three ingredients are needed: histoire, terroir, passion. When we started we had two of these ingredients, an extraordinary territory, Franciacorta, and our passion, which would take us far”.

Maurizio Zanella

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“Franco Fontana is color. In his long career Fontana transformed color into a form and made it the protagonist, real and abstract, of every image. I would add, Franco Fontana is a friend and in the name of our friendship this tireless inventor of kaleidoscopic landscapes agreed to interpret our world in black and white”.

Maurizio Zanella

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GEORG GESTER

He was born on April 30, 1928 in Winterthur, Switzerland, where he attended a classic lyceum.

After getting a degree in German and English studies from Zurich University, he served as scientific editor for the Zurich Weltwoche. In 1956 he began to work as a freelance editorialist, specializing in scientific reports and aerial photography. Altitude provides a general view, a general view facilitates comprehension, comprehension leads to perhaps attention. Following this chain of logic Gerster transformed aerial photography into aerial viewpoints and, in the best of cases, into a philosophic medium, a tool for reflection. He works regularly for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and National Geographic Magazine in Washington.

Living in nature, having a farm, animals, eggs, butter, fresh cheese was my mother’s desire, not mine. And at the beginning, once again, I rebelled but at some point, the land that grows our vines also made something sprout inside me.

Maurizio Zanella, the story, the memories.

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When Georg Gerster arrives at Ca' del Bosco, he has already flown over one hundred and eleven countries and from the airplane has photographed metropolises, deserts, forests, mountains, and oceans. It was Helmut Newton who introduced me to Georg -"he is the pioneer of aerial photography and he is the best" - he had told me.

Maurizio Zanella introduces the first author of the project "11 fotografi, 1 vino" published by Skira, Georg Gerster.

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RALPH GIBSON

He studied photography while serving in the United States Navy and afterwards at the San Francisco Art Institute.

He made his debut in the profession as an assistant to Dorothea Lang, subsequently working on two films with Robert Frank. His photographs are exhibited in over one hundred and fifty museums around the world. For over forty years he has worked exclusively with Leica. He received Honorary Doctorates of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland in 1991 and from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1997.

"I have a very personal method for evaluating the luck of each of us, and I start with my story: I consider myself a lucky man because I have had many teachers, at least four. A teacher, Ralph Gibson told me, is someone who helps you understand how you really are, you don't see it yet, but the light of talent, the passion within you exists. The first person who saw something good inside me and helped me take my first steps in the world of oenology was my mother and if one of our most important wines is called “Annamaria Clementi” the reason is very clear".

Maurizio Zanella

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“The letter arrived on my desk in the first days of October 1989: it was Helmut Newton who suggested Ralph Gibson write to me to offer his collaboration on our project. I accepted with enthusiasm because I knew one of Ralph's most original books, The Sonnambulist, and because I knew that this great American photographer would find one of his fantastic worlds also at Ca' del Bosco”.

Maurizio Zanella

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EIKOH HOSOE

He was born in Yonezawa (Yamagata prefecture) Japan in 1933 but moved to Tokyo when still a child.

He studied at the College of Photography in Tokyo, graduating in 1954. From 1974 to 2003 he was a professor at the Polytechnic University of Tokyo, where he is now professor emeritus. Since 1995 he has been director of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts and is a photographer and director.

"I became an adult, building the Ca' del Bosco cellar. I was seventeen and had just made that very important trip to Burgundy: in addition to the vineyards, I had seen the cellars and those little barrels, that almost sacred silence that lit up the dark had me very impressed."

Maurizio Zanella

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"The harvest was over, we had collected the last bunches, and suddenly Eikoh Hosoe asked us to throw the now empty crates in the air. if I have to think of an image that tells of my encounter with this genius of Japanese photography, fine, is that: mountains in the background, a black sky so blue, we who look like dancers, each sculpted in a perfect gesture, and the cassettes still in the air."

Maurizio Zanella

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MIMMO JODICE

One of the great names in the history of Italian photography.

He lives and works in Naples, where he was born in 1934. From 1970 to 1996 he taught photography at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts. An avant-garde photography since the 1960s, interested in experimentation and the expressive possibilities of photographic language, he was a leader in the cultural debate fostering the growth and international fame of Italian photography.

"When I met him, I thought I was in the presence of a man from Ancient Greece, a philosopher, a traveler, perhaps Socrates, perhaps Ulysses. Mimmo Jodice embodies antiquity to such an extent that he has become part of it, But it is precisely because of his understanding of past times and their signs that I invited him to Ca' del Bosco."

Maurizio Zanella

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"It doesn't often happen to enter the sun, or rather to open it and pass through it. But when Mimmo Jodice arrived at Ca' del Bosco, he felt that the "Solar Gate" created by Arnaldo Pomodoro, at the entrance of our estate, should be the starting point for his work. He asked me to open it, and in doing so, he let those rays vibrate, the rays that make our work and the work of photographers so special. In a single image, this master of Italian photography, so ancient and contemporary, always incredibly elegant, sensed another passion of mine, complementary to the passion for wine and equally essential."

Maurizio Zanella

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WILLIAM KLEIN

Photographer, painter, filmmaker and graphic artist, he was born in 1928 in Manhattan, where he grew up.

After finishing college at the age of eighteen he joined the United States Army, spending six months in Germany with the Occupation forces and a year and a half studying at the Sorbonne in Paris under a French-U.S. friendship program. In 1954 he kept a photographic journal of his return to New York, which became his first book: Life is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels. His awards include the French Grand Prix National, the English Millennium Medal, the international Hasselblad Prize and in May 2004 the highest prize from the American National Arts Club.

"In these days we are harvesting and in a way, we are like the ancient Romans who celebrated the Vinalia Rustica on August 19th, a festival dedicated to the grape harvest, in honor of those bunches of grapes and their wonderful nectar, farmers offered sacrifices to Jupiter. We too, in our own way, have decided to make a sacrifice, and we have done so by choosing the precision viticulture method. In every hectare of Ca' del Bosco, we have planted ten thousand vines and each of these plants is a perfect organism that controls its strength and decides how many shoots to grow and bring to maturity, and the shoots are few, which means little quantity but extremely high quality."

Maurizio Zanella

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"When I invited William Klein to Ca' del Bosco, many thought I was crazy. In the tranquility of our vineyards, the greatest photographer of the metropolis: chaos, crowds, traffic, this is not us, for sure, but I chose this master of street photography for another reason. A reason that is actually very 'Ca' del Bosco': William Klein was a rebel, a free man who never accepted the rules imposed by others."

Maurizio Zanella introduces one of the authors of the project "11 fotografi, 1 vino" published by Skira, William Klein.

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DON MCCULLIN

Born in London in 1935, at age thirteen he won a scholarship to study painting at the Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts but two years later, with his father’s death, he was obliged to seek a job. .

During military service with the RAF he became an assistant photographer in charge of printing the photos taken in reconnaissance missions. He then devoted himself seriously to photography, taking portraits of friends, until his actual professional debut with the Sunday Times, for which he worked for eighteen years, often in war zones: Vietnam, Biafra and Lebanon. Twice named Photographer of the Year, he won two gold and three silver medals from the Designers and Art Directors Association.

"Over the years I have learned to face time, its strength, its generosity, and sometimes even its wickedness. No one would have believed it, I who know how to wait, I who remain silent and listen to the earth, the seasons. As a boy I was the exact opposite, always on the front line, always adrenaline pumping, always running away from the time decided by others, whether it was my family or school, it doesn't matter, and instead one day, in the midst of my most metropolitan adolescence, I found myself in the slow time of the countryside, in Erbusco, in Franciacorta, where my parents had bought the famous house in the woods."

Maurizio Zanella

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"He had set the appointment for 4.30 in the morning, before dawn, because he wanted to see the light arrive, he wanted to feel it pass through the branches of the trees, touch the rows and come down to the ground among the leaves and the gray water of the puddles. In December 2002 the legend of photojournalism, the man who created the most dramatic images of the war in Vietnam, arrived at Ca' del Bosco, a man with clear eyes who in thirty years of reportage around the world had seen the most horrible side of man. Meet Don McCullin, the simplest, most sensitive, most beautiful person I have ever met."

Maurizio Zanella

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HELMUT NEWTON

Born in Berlin in 1929. He attained international fame in the 1970s, particularly for his work for French Vogue.

He is renowned for the fascinating layouts of his photographs as well as for the striking and often provocative environments he chose for his models. Newton shot his photographs mainly on the street or in interiors rather than in the controlled atmosphere of the studio. In 1990 he was awarded France’s Grand Prix for Photography and in 1992 the German government gave him its Grosse Verdienst Kreuz prize for his contributions to German culture. In 1996 he was appointed Commandeur del’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by Philippe Douste-Blazy, at the time French Minister of Culture.He died in Hollywood in January 2004. The Helmut Newton Foundation opened in Berlin in June 2004.

"Equaling Helmut Newton is impossible, because he is unique, unique in style, size, provocations, elegance. A moment, a few millimeters that change the pose of the body, a stronger light, a less perfect dress, an eye make-up which doesn't have that right point of sensual tiredness, and everything collapses, the image loses its proverbial Newtonian "taste". It's a bit like what happens with our wines, where there is a Ca' del Bosco "taste", always recognizable but which evolves over the years and which we protect as the most precious gift."

Maurizio Zanella

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"Helmut Newton was the first and it seems right to close with him the gallery of "11 photographers and 1 wine", the title of the beautiful book that collects twenty years of photography dedicated to Ca' del Bosco. I met Helmut Newton and his wife June in 1989, in Los Angeles, at Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant, and I was Wolfgang's best man at his wedding. In this atmosphere among friends I began to imagine Newton's gaze among our vineyards and our cellars, I could already see his splendid models, with nothing on except a pair of very high heels, and I saw them picking bunches of grapes, as if they were Bacchantes."

Maurizio Zanella

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FERDINANDO SCIANNA

Born on July 4, 1943 in Bagheria, Sicily.He began to work as a photographer in 1960. He studied literature and philosophy at the University of Palermo, where he also attended lectures by great art critic Cesare Brandi.

In 1962 he met writer Leonardo Sciascia, the beginning of a great friendship and a collaboration that would lead them to publish numerous books together. In 1987 he was welcomed as a Magnum associate and began, alongside that of a photojournalist, a very successful fashion photography activity. He became a member of Magnum in 1989, the first Italian.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said: "Wine is the glory of humanity," and Ernst Hemingway added: "Wine is one of the greatest signs of civilization in the world." I feel inclined to add a personal note: for me, wine is a celebration that rewards passion, sacrifices, intuitions, aspirations, and risks.

Maurizio Zanella

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"I don't know if it was meant as a provocation or perhaps because the countryside makes no concessions to anyone, but I invited Ferdinando Scianna in winter. A traditional Magnum photojournalist, but above all, a Sicilian, a man of light and shadow as he likes to define himself. Scianna arrived at Ca' del Bosco on the days when we were burning the pruned vines. Tshe sky was gray, there was fog, it was cold, and in the silence of the countryside, you could only hear the crackling of the bonfires."

Maurizio Zanella

Maurizio Zanella

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ALICE SPRINGS (JUNE BROWNE)

Born in 1923 in Melbourne, Australia. A theater buff, she devoted herself to acting under the stage name June Brunelle.

In 1956 she was awarded the Erik Kuttner Prize as best stage actress. In 1948 she married Helmut Newton and in 1970, in Paris, began her own career as a photographer using an ironic pseudonym, Alice Springs. June Newton spent much of her life in London and Paris and for the past twenty years has been living in Monte Carlo.

"Choosing the name of a city as your stage name means choosing to be rational. And June Newton, aka Alice Springs, has a strong, cold, measured, at times harsh character. In fact it was she who intuited something that the authors of the volume 11 photographers and 1 wine, all men, had missed, and I'm talking of control, I'm talking about the ancient joy that man feels when he enters into harmony with nature to the point of measuring and changing its course."

Maurizio Zanella

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"She changed her name three times and each time it was the invention of a new life. Alice Springs is an extraordinary portraitist and at Ca' del Bosco she was the only one, with absolute originality, to focus only on our faces; female and male faces, severe, marked by time, young, smiling. For some of our farmers she was the second time in front of a camera, the first meeting dates back to the first communion."

Maurizio Zanella

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