Signs

Segni is a monographic collection devoted to the photography of Nino Migliori, a leading artistic personality credited with the deep transformation of post-war Italian photography. The photographs in this publication, which are divided into nine thematic sections, testify to the versatility, creativity and innovation that have characterized the artist's production since its beginnings. A production whose thread is experimentation and a fruitful curiosity fostered by a combination of engagement and delight, observation and irony. In this sense, the closing passage of Philippe Daverio's introductury text seems to be particularly significant: His is a varied course. In the 1950s he focused his Neo-Realist attention on describing an evolving nation, old fashioned in its people but ripe for the flattery of modernity. He soon passed over [...] to the other side, to abstraction, an abstraction catching sight of a different formal imagery. Furthermore, he ventured into investigating nature's organisms [...] where the optical system no longer rules and left this role to the magic alchemy of printing. Then he turned his eyes to contemporary narration, that which has become practically virtual in the last thirty years, television. Migliori keeps on taking photographs of it in order to apply the 'culture of the instant', of time frozen forever in the fleeting ephemeral world of air. Photographing is documenting. Photographing is loving.

Nino Migliori was born in Bologna, where he still lives. Since 1948, he has been developing some of the most articulated and interesting photographic research in European image culture.