Giovanni Gastel
Raped by time the photographer as a poet.
Considerations about the power of benzodiazepines
The passing of time horrifies me. Balancing and icy standardized white pills, bearers of an unknown wisdom.
Without great masters we travel in an averaged and equalized world, being reduced to an ant heap unit.
And time is passing over my body, transforming it noiselessly.
Accept it - waiting for something to happen to wake us up from the slumber of repeated rhythms, of unstable silences.
And furthermore the dry contact of a tiny tablet and the contraction of my throat waiting for this pharmaceutical serenity, this millésimé good mood, this chemical balance I need in my one and only given life that I anyhow love despite the every day loss of poetry and its clear essence of mediation.
I feel raped by time just as this sheet is violated by the black signs I carve on it, so distant from truth, so clear on the sheet, so clean.
Time passes without me learning much, no great progress, no ideal destinations.
I was sitting between drunken Blacks and Germans at the cane roofed bar of the Tropicana, waiting (oh, such a long wait) for a beer. Being armoured with overconfidence I thought: everything can be understood, even the almost human thickness of air itself.
Then a shape stepped afore the shadows with immoral and destructive elegance: to remember me of this irrational and random god, this triumph of brute cells on complex organisms. Empty and miraculously alive you moved forward, relentless and frightful as the ancient gods.
And in the embrace of the warm wind, in the brightness of the sky I was trying to recollect the hidden impulses in me, to break the stalemate of the victorious defeat that is one's will.
Victorious and defeated we remain, thirsty of heart and propriety in the noise of a relative world, confused between these traces of loneliness.
Giovanni Gastel, Lomè 1988
Giovanni Gastel is probably one of the most prolific photographer of the milanese fashion scene. His images have been extensively used by the industry, they have defined the visual language of the italian fashion boom from the 80's to the end of the 90's. But he's also a poet, he never stopped being a romantic and a a poet, since he was a teenager.
As a photographer he has always managed to fulfill the requests of his customers, even when they where distant from his taste, partly because of his being an impeccable professional but also because of his unlimited willingness.
During the 80's, when he was one of the main thoroughbred photographers of the Flavio Lucchini's team, his images where sleek and polished, concentrating the viewer attention on the product. Later on he moved to Paris, extending his editorial commitments, and his photography slowly drifted back to experimentation and romanticism.
Today he has become an absolute reference point in italian photography, president of AFIP (the Italian professional photographers association), exceptionally active in editorial and advertising photography, unfailingly committed to his never ending personal photographic research.
But still he writes "Time passes without me learning much", while his magic moment doesn't seem to end. His time is still filled with endless meetings and shootings and editing sessions, a tourbillon of people and events in which he drifts elegantly, sometimes getting lost in it, always accepting with a smile the gifts of life. And benzodiazepines, of course.
I am a trained old man
playing his role by day
but silently in the darkness
nurturing an uncautious project
salvage what's left of memories
preserve it from time's strokes
G.G. Milano 2009
For LateAndModern Gastel selected, among others, a number of absolute vintage prints from his juvenile essays in photography: images of Egypt that remind of Maxime Du Camp travel records with Gustave Flaubert in 1850 and other early prints among which the portrait of a friend that resulted being his first sold photograph, 20 dollars.
Giovanni Gastel Prints Series
Notes on the prints
Giovanni Gastel's prints are dated, signed and certified by the author. Vintage prints are sold "as is". Modern prints edition, unless where expressly noted, are produced in the declared number plus two artist's proofs.
Early Works
Gastel's early works including the first sold photograph. Unique prints.Prints are signed "Jean Gastel" on recto.
Toned unique vintage prints on Silver Gelatine paper.
Vintage Egypt
Gastel's first approach to photography as a teenager. Unique prints.Three prints are signed "Jean Gastel" on recto.
Toned unique vintage prints on Silver Gelatine paper.
Vintage Egypt, 1972
Vintage Egypt, 1972
Vintage Egypt, 1972
Vintage Egypt, 1972
Vintage Egypt, 1972
Vintage Egypt, 1972
Diving
Olympic divers photographed at the Foro Italico olympic pool. 8x10 plate camera.Modern giclée prints from 8x10'' Polaroid, numbered edition on cotton paper.
Diving, 1997
Diving, 1997
Diving, 1997
Visual Scrapbook
A Portfolio of Gastel's intense and moody research images.Modern giclée prints from 8x10'' Polaroid, numbered edition on cotton paper.
Body
Four images dealing with body parts, Polaroid 8x10''.Modern giclée prints from 8x10'' Polaroid, numbered edition on cotton paper.
Body, 1998
Body, 1998
Body, 1998
Body, 1999
