Mimmo Jodice

The latest issue of FMR magazine features some very lovely monochrome photographs of Greek and Roman antiquities by the Italian photographer Mimmo Jodice. I picked out a selection and scanned and uploaded them—note, however, that most of the original images were larger than A4 size, and the following are all more-or-less cropped.

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Jodice, we read, only became a professional photographer from the age of 30. At first, his work was documentary: a socially-conscious presentation of the people & places he knew from the poor, working-class districts of his native Naples. In the 80’s, his lens was first drawn to the time-worn, antiquarian subjects illustrated here.

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…whether they are living, breathing men and women, or motionless statues, it is always Neapolitans or Sicilians whom he photographs: it is still the sunlit Mezzogiorno which provides his inspiration; it is still the same play of light and shade which fascinates him, still the same subtleties of chiaroscuro which he plays upon like a musician—Dominique Fernandez.

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To my eye, Jodice neither celebrates nor romanticizes the past in these images, but rather sympathises with its survivors. He shows us how beautiful ruined and broken things can be.

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These images are Copyright © 1991-96 Mimmo Jodice, and I’ve reproduced them without permission, only for as long as no-one objects to their presence here. Click on the images to see them much enlarged.