Having studied photography at the London College of Printing in 1964, Italian photographer Massimo Vitali would embark on a long and successful career in photo-journalism; before being hit with a discomposing realisation that photography didn’t have the true capacity to convey the subtleties of reality.

Rocked by a distrust in the career he’d forged, Vitali turned to large format art photography; the ambiguity and openness of art confirming his suspicions on the validity of photography to represent real life. Here, in his creative pursuit, the narratives of Vitali’s imagery could be left open-ended — his beach panoramas (which began in the mid-1990s, amid momentous political change in his country) depicting what he called a ‘sanitised, complacent view of Italian normalities.’

The artist would be more critical of the ‘normalities’ he witnessed: ‘its cosmetic fakery, sexual innuendo, commodified leisure, deluded sense of affluence, and rigid conformism.’ Indeed, the everyday man’s tendency to herd themselves has become an ongoing obsession for the Italian; creating images from holidaying hordes the world over. Counterpoising Vitali’s uneasy relationship with those caught in his voyeuristic gaze is the painterly beauty of his compositions; landscapes littered with the vulnerable, ant-like bodies that inhabit them. Currently showing at Mayfair’s Ronchini Gallery, this exhibition is the artist’s first solo UK show for five years, and brings together many later works from his 22-year practice.

Massimo Vitali at Ronchini Gallery, London, continues until 18 June 2016.

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Massimo Vitali, Lençois Laguna do Peixe, Brazil, 2013,
Lightjet print from negative scan on photographic paper,
Diasec mount with wooden frame, 180 x 226 cm,
courtesy the artist and Ronchini Gallery

Massimo Vitali, Piscinão de Ramos, Brazil, 2013,
chromogenic print on Diasec, 182 x 226 cm,
courtesy the artist and Ronchini Gallery

Massimo Vitali, Malbacco, 2014,
Lightjet print from original digital file (stitched) on photographic paper on Diasec with wooden frame,
270 x 180 cm, courtesy the artist and Ronchini Gallery