Icon of Italian Photography

Giovanni Gastel ranks among the most widely acclaimed representatives of Italian photography. For thirty years, he worked with leading fashion magazines including Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair. Before making the shift to digital photography, large-format Polaroids were his primary medium of choice. Devoted to experimentation, Gastel introduced double exposures, superimpositions and artistic reworking techniques to contemporary fashion photography.

As the nephew of Luchino Visconti, Gastel was born into the traditions of ancient Milanese nobility, characterised by an elegance and charm that is echoed in his visual style. His images tell of an unstoppable trajectory of creative research and exploration, which simultaneously reflects the aesthetic trends of the past 25 years. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Gastel worked on campaigns for the most important Italian fashion houses. During the nineties, the success in his home country brought him to Paris – where he photographed for brands such as Dior and Guerlain – as well as Spain and the UK.

A solo exhibition at the 1997 Milan Triennale, curated by Germano Celant, catapulted him to the forefront of international photography – and in the years that followed, his career continued to go from strength to strength. Gastel served on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Contemporary Photography and on the Board of Directors of the IEO-CCM Foundation until his untimely death on March 13, 2021. 

The Noir Blanche Gallery is the exclusive representative of Giovanni Gastel’s work in Germany.