A series of exhibitions organized at Villa Manin di Passariano, in Casarsa della Delizia and in Pordenone celebrates the eighty years of Elio Ciol, one of the Italian landscape photographers better known in the world, and sixty years of professional work of the artist. Elio Ciol is known mainly for his photographic interpretations of Italian landscape and for his work of documentation of artistic heritage. The Villa Manin exhibition deals with a lesser known period of the photographer, that of the years of his formation, between 1950 and 1964.

Italy was living at the time a period of great creative ardour in all fields, from cinema to literature, from arts to photography. The country had just come out of the war, and in the developed areas was in the middle of the great work of industrial transformation. The climax of neorealism brought innovative sights on this society in transformation with messages that penetrated deeply in the population thanks to the diffusion of cinema and printed press.

Elio Ciol, making his debut, participated to the debate in those years, for example attending to the club La Gondola in Venice, that in those years was a focal point of photographic creativity. He also narrated with his images the fervent climate of social transformation, but also the seeming stillness of the countryside and the mountains in Friuli and Veneto, that in that period were still living in ancient ways of life and production; and also the enchantment of Southern Italy, very similar to what fascinated the travelers of Grand Tour in 18th century. Elio Ciol’s narration showed also the signs of a refined language, built through a formal research hooked to black and white. Life and aesthetics blend in the images of the period, and the proof is in the extraordinary photographs Ciol shot a few hours after the Vajont tragedy...