Mondello Paddle Boats

Massimo Vitali was born in Como, Italy, in 1944. He studied photography at the London College of Printing, in the 1970s initially working as a photojournalist, but at the beginning of the 1980s, a growing mistrust in the belief that photography had an absolute capacity to reproduce the subtleties of reality led to a change in his career path.

Vitali worked in cinematography for film and television before beginning a fine art practice in 1995. Over the next two decades, he would gain recognition for his highly detailed, epic-scale panoramas — sociopolitical observations of the natural habitat of humankind at leisure. Vitali’s iconic series of beach panoramas, captured from a distance with an elevated large-format camera platform, began in the light of drastic political changes in Italy.

Drawing inspiration from Renaissance and Old Flemish masters, in which the central space is fully exploited and the urban or natural landscape becomes the background, Vitali’s large-scale photographs grasp the viewer by capturing highly detailed observances of the recreational habitats of modern civilization.

Vitali’s work has been collected in six monographs: Beach and Disco, Natural Habitats, Landscapes With Figures, Swimming Pools, Short Stories and, in 2020, Entering A New World.

Additionally, Vitali’s work is represented in the world’s major museums, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Fonds national d'art contemporain in Paris, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Fondation Cartier in Paris and the Museo Luigi Pecci in Prato.

Vitali lives and works in Lucca (Italy) and in Berlin (Germany).

Find a collection of original Massimo Vitali photography on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by Edition EKTAlux)

Color photography evokes emotion that can bring a viewer into the scene. It can transport one to faraway places or back into the past.

The first color photograph, taken in 1861, was more of an exercise in science than art. Photographer Thomas Sutton and physicist James Clerk Maxwell used three separate exposures of a tartan ribbon — filtered through red, green and blue — and composited them into a single image, resulting in the first multicolor representation of an object.

Before this innovation, photographs were often tinted by hand. By the 1890s, color photography processes were introduced based on that 1860s experiment. In the early 20th century, autochromes brought color photography to a commercial audience.

Now color photography is widely available, with these historic photographs documenting moments and scenes that are still vivid generations later. Photographers in the 20th and 21st centuries have offered new perspectives in the evolving field of modern color photography with gripping portraiture, snow-capped landscapes, stunning architecture and lots more.

In the voluminous collection of photography on 1stDibs, find vibrant full-color images by Slim Aarons, Helen Levitt, Gordon Parks, Stefanie Schneider, Steve McCurry and other artists. Bring visual interest to any corner of your home with color photography — introduce a salon-style gallery hang or another arrangement that best fits your space.