About

There’s no hurry to take photos. Images present themselves before me while I live. Sometimes I look for the Photo but only after it calls to me. I needn’t hurry. Just sit there and wait. Just live. It will come in an authentic way.

Alessandro Mallamaci photographs the landscape of southern Italy, and makes books with it. Born in Reggio Calabria in 1980, where he still works, he graduated in DAMS at the Università della Calabria with a specialisation in multimedia. His interest in the visual arts, communication and photography began in 1996, and he has not looked for another subject since: the Aspromonte, the coast, the buildings that are never finished — the places he crosses every day and that oblige him to withhold the judgement that would otherwise be automatic.

His recent work is done inside research projects. Assets in Transition, on properties confiscated from organised crime along the SS106, with Armando Perna and the dAeD department of the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria. Sud Heritage and An Atlas of Work, on the company museums of Calabria, published by Rubbettino. Summer Love, on the Cutro shipwreck, made for the first commemoration of the wreck. What holds them together is a landscape read through its erasures — a language, a river, a route — and the book as the form that reading takes.

He designs the books himself. Un luogo bello, with an essay by Giovanna Calvenzi, is in its second edition; several more exist as dummies.

From 2013 he worked as an ambassador and educator, collaborating with Fujifilm, Leica and EIZO; for nine years he directed a network of photography courses across Italy and, in Reggio Calabria, a cultural centre and a school of professional photography. He has lectured at Columbia College in Chicago. Since the 2023/24 academic year he has taught at the Accademia di Belle Arti “Pietro Vannucci” in Perugia and, since 2025/26, at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Catania.

His artistic projects and the books he has designed have received awards and been shown in exhibitions, art fairs and galleries across China, France, Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the UK and the USA, fostering valuable international collaborations. He has managed a cultural centre, a photography school and a far-reaching educational project encompassing dozens of classes and teachers across Italy. He has organised festivals, workshops and talks, curated exhibitions, and led a communication agency, a photo agency and a fine art printing lab.

Member of Tau Visual, Associazione Nazionale Fotografi Professionisti, he is represented by Galleria Valeria Bella in Milan.

Statement

I love photographs that ask questions rather than offer answers.

Photography must make us lose our references: in front of it we must feel displaced, rather than having confirmation of what we already know or expect to see.

I find it essential to continue representing the landscape to feed reflections, involving in the debate even those who are not interested in visual arts, who are not used to looking at the landscape with the right slowness or simply no longer see it.

It is crucial that artists propose relational practices between their work and the public — in particular, but not only — the inhabitants of the places depicted.

Honesty and insight are essential values for a successful research.

The full record is also available as a curriculum vitae in PDF — it opens the CV page in a new tab, ready to be saved as a PDF.

Exhibitions, prizes and selections are listed under Exhibitions & Awards; the publication record under Publications.