Diego Bardone

“Freedom begins with irony.” This is a quote from Victor Hugo that inspires Diego Bardone’s photography and permeates all his work. Just like Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, he tries to extract irony from what is bad in the world, and to capture its funny side with his camera. If he can make those who look at his photographs smile, then he knows he has done a good job. He calls himself a simple man, taking simple photographs, nothing more nothing less, and looking for short circuits in reality that make the ordinary extraordinary. His “Photo ridens” series includes more than 50 photographs for now and he really believes that the number will continue to increase for a long time.

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Based in Milan until last year, Diego Bardone now lives in a small town in central Italy (Valentano). He started photography in his early 20s, working for an Italian newspaper and the Tam Tam agency for a few years. Then life took him elsewhere and he stopped taking photographs for 20 years. He started again by chance, more or less 15 years ago. He calls himself a humanist photographer, influenced by the photographers of postwar France: Doisneau, Bresson, Ronis, Izis, Boubat just to name a few. Erwitt and Kalvar are also a great source of inspiration. He loves their ironic, romantic and melancholy way of portraying the world. He has 3 books to his credit: “Street life Milano,” by Clandestine Sheet Editions (2018), “Strange days,” self-published (2021) and Indigo Project – “Beyond appearances,” by Massimo Fiameni editions (together with his other half, Maria Grazia Scarpetta).

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