ยฉ Berengo Gardin
Berengo Gardin and the Patron That No Longer Exists
Today is the first of May. International Workers’ Day, and in Italy for many years this date had a precise photographic iconography: union marches, factories, farmworkers, hands on tools. That iconography has almost disappeared from feeds today. It is worth asking who it served.
Gianni Berengo Gardin, who died in August 2025 at 94, did an important part of his work inside Italian factories. Olivetti from 1965 to 1990, one visit a month to Ivrea with full access to the plant. Then Pirelli, Ansaldo, Italsider, mental hospitals with Carla Cerati in 1969. He entered with the time the commission paid for (weeks, not hours), knew the workers by name, ate in the canteen with them. His photographs give back people, and the worker looks into the camera as an equal.
The interesting point for the photographer reading is the patron. Olivetti, Pirelli, Comunitร , Domus, Epoca, Il Mondo: these were magazines and companies that paid photographers to look at a place with care. When the patron changes, photography changes. Without paid time you do not get into the canteen, learn the names, come back the next day. You enter as a guest, two hours at most, and you leave with images that look “Berengo Gardin-style” but are not.
Today that patron has almost vanished. Corporate communications produce their own content, they do not commission reportage. Illustrated magazines are dead or converted. What remains is the photographer who self-funds or works for a company’s social channel on a three-day brief. The work of the new workers (riders, Amazon warehouse staff, software developers on remote platforms) is invisible twice over: by the nature of the work itself, and because no one pays anyone to go look at it for five weeks.
The question at the editor’s table is not “how do you photograph work today?”. It is “who pays whoever wants to do it?”. If you want to document real work, you have to build that patron yourself, because the structure that used to build it is gone.
Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marco Savarese
Marco Savarese is Editor-in-Chief at Eyeshot, the independent publisher he founded in Italy in 2018. He spends most of his year reading portfolios, judging the Open Call, and editing the magazine catalogue. The reading desk is open, and he takes one-to-one Professional Reviews from photographers working seriously on long-term projects.
Who Finishes Your Photograph
NOTE #210. A photo isn’t finished until it survives to where people see it. Paul Strand chose hand photogravure for Photographs of Mexico so the printed copy kept the tonal weight of his prints. Protect the tone to the end, or the worst medium decides for you.
What the Dark Does
NOTE #209. A face lost in shadow reads as underexposed, a defect to fix. Gordon Willis kept Brando’s eyes in the dark in The Godfather and held it against the studio. Before you rescue a shadow, ask what it does; if you can say it, you decided it.
The Place After
NOTE #208. Of a huge event, often only an ordinary place is left. In On This Site (1996) Joel Sternfeld photographed fifty banal American places where violence happened, each with a line of text. Photograph the aftermath, and let the line do the work.
The Photo Made Together
NOTE #206. Street photography teaches you to steal people; there’s another way. In Malick Sidibรฉ’s Bamako studio the youth chose how to be seen. Before you take someone, ask how they’d want to look, and make the photo together.
Write Your Own Rules
NOTE #205. The thing that improves you most isn’t a new camera, it’s a short list of your own faults. Tony Ray-Jones kept a notebook of orders to himself and it shaped Martin Parr. Write your three rules and keep them in your pocket.
Watch the Master Work
NOTE #204. You don’t learn from a master’s finished prints, you learn from watching them work. In 1962 Joel Meyerowitz watched Robert Frank shoot, quit his job that day, and picked up a camera. Watch the body, not the result.
The Work Before the Name
NOTE #203. The worth of a photo and the worth of the byline are two different things. Koudelka shot the 1968 Prague invasion anonymously as ‘P.P.’ and revealed it sixteen years later. Photograph what must be photographed even when no one will know it was you.
The Subject You Run From
NOTE #202. The strongest subject you have is the one you’d rather not photograph. Ishiuchi Miyako went back to Yokosuka, the occupied base town she was taught to fear, and made it her life’s work. Point the camera where it’s uncomfortable.