FORMA - Centro Internazionale di Fotografia

John McDermott believes that a former tram depot in Milan is giving out all the right signals when it comes to promoting photography in Italy.

As home to Italy’s stock exchange, its famous fashion houses and the huge Italian media industry, the northern city of Milan is the undisputed heart of the country’s economy. It has also always been the focal point of Italian photography, serving as home to most of the country’s top photographic agencies and many of its best shooters.

But while somewhere like New York has long had the International Center of Photography (IPC), where important exhibitions are held and aspiring photographers come to study and interact with leading practitioners, there has, until recently, been no such comparable institution in Italy. Thanks to the initiative of the Italian photo reportage agency and photo book publisher Contrasto, there is now such a place.

FORMA, of which Canon Italia is the principal sponsor, grew out of an interesting collaboration between Contrasto, the heavyweight agency founded by photographer Roberto Koch, and two other Milan institutions: the influential national newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, and ATM, the city’s transport authority. Created in 2005, Forma is housed in a stylishly renovated old ATM tram depot in the Porta Ticinese neighborhood, a short distance south of the Piazza Duomo, Milan’s cathedral square and historic center. The project’s goal from the outset was to become the city’s ‘House of Photography’, much the way ICP has done in New York.

 

 

FORMA boasts a calendar of frequently changing exhibitions by Italian and international photographers and a vibrant education program that offers professional workshops and now a Masters degree in Photography and Visual Design. The highlight of 2007 was a complete retrospective of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and other recent shows have included names like Sebastião Salgado, Peter Lindbergh, Martin Schoeller and Martin Parr. So far, FORMA is succeeding beyond anyone’s expectations. It also boasts what is probably the best-stocked photo bookstore in Italy. Contrasto is known for the quality and diversity of the photo books it publishes and they are all available here. There is even a small but excellent restaurant on the premises. This is, after all, Italy.

The two recent exhibitions at Forma presented a stark contrast in style and subject matter. One of Italy’s greatest living artists, Neapolitan fine art photographer Mimmo Jodice, who has had shows at both the New York and San Francisco Museums of Modern Art, presented a 30-year retrospective of dreamy large format black and white Italian city views and landscapes devoid of any human presence. Entitled ‘Perdersi a Guardare’, or ‘Lost in Looking’, it was a world away from American Jessica Dimmock’s ‘The Ninth Floor’, a gritty and intimate look at the lives of a group of New York City heroin addicts. Contrasto, perhaps not surprisingly, has published high-quality companion books to both of these shows.