Carlo Orsi

Vogue Girl · April 8, 2020

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In the 70's Carlo Orsi was probably the most glamorous of the Milanese fashion photographers.
His photos where sexy, he had a real feeling with girls, he had brought into fashion and glamour photography a new, fresh attitude that derived from his being a photo reporter. As Guido Vergani says (quoted in Arnaldo Pomodoro's text that we publish) "Carlo is one of the few photographers who know how to be both great reporters and great image creators. Like all great reporters he has the ability to emotionally participate in the event, of putting the focus on that particular detail that the others miss, paying great attention on the faces, the gestures, the existence, the atmosphere ... of the great creators of images for fashion and advertising he has the imagination, the visual ideas, the taste for the gimmick, the scenic element that sublimate the message."
Carlo has had a very long and successful career in fashion photography then one day, unexpectedly, the game was over.
In a conversation with art critic Federico Sardella he points it out very clearly: "I worked twenty-five years in fashion, and then I quit. I've always worked because day after day my phone kept ringing. It's not in my nature to put myself forward. And when my phone stopped ringing I started doing other things".
So he just happily got back to his roots: his artist friends, his 52 Leicas and the motorcycle, the darkroom, Berlin and reportage photography.
In 2004 he started a collaboration with Interplast Italy NGO documenting their plastic surgery missions all over the third world. He swiftly passed from photographing the absolute beauty of models to documenting the suffering and pain of the less fortunate.
Carlo is a passionate italian photographer and at a certain point he felt he had to express his feelings about his 25 years experience in fashion photography so he did it in the most clever way: he macerated some of his 35mm fashion transparencies letting humidity corrode the film emulsion. A sort of slow, physical and archaic "darkroom work". The resulting images are gems of colours and textures, an elegant "manifesto" about his feelings on fashion images but also a precise statement about photography as a form of craftsmanship.

lateandmodern.com

Vogue Girl · April 8, 2020

Vogue Italia October (2) 1973
"Mettersi Addosso Un'idea"
Models: Dayle Haddon, Bonnie Lysohir & Unknowns
Photographers: Arthur Elgort & Carlo Orsi
Hair: Gió