For his third personal exhibition in gallery Anne Barrault, Gabriele Basilico presents photographs taken in Rio and Shanghai between 2010 and 2011.

Gabriele Basilico ( born in Milano in 1944) is, at the present time, one of the best known documentary photographers in Europe. A retrospective of his work has been shown in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in la Maison Européenne de la photographie in Paris, in the MOMA of San Francisco (for the latest exhibitions).

Going on with his radioscopy of the architecture and development of big cities, Gabriele Basilico examines the changes of these sites of living and civilization where now most people have their homes.
What becomes of the identity of the city through tne ceaseless alterations which affect it?
How do the old structures and the new additions hang together coherently?

Gabriele Basilico’s photographs, today coloured ones, show that the outward changes cannot hide the preserved stability of the city, that they use the very continuity of its self. As if these multiple transformations were only the symptoms of the growth of a living body. Old, ramshackle buildings are next to new ones in Rio, and futurist ones in Shanghai. Different periods overlap and reveal a city with various forms, colours, materials.

Man appears, which is unusual in Basilico’s photographs, looking at the objective, the symbol of the continuous increase in population . A few days ago, the headlines of the newspapers were “ the world passes the seven billion inhabitants mark”.