Maurizio Galimberti

One August morning at Marcinelle, Maurizio Galimberti pointed his camera upwards and for several hours shot the same subject, which turned out differently in each of the 262 images. One for each of the victims of the disaster that occurred on the morning of 8 August 1956 in the same Belgian mining town, claiming the lives of 262 miners.

A photographer and artist of international renown, Maurizio Galimberti is famous for working almost exclusively with Polaroid, developing an extremely personal manipulation technique to deconstruct and reconstruct the image. In this new book, Galimberti tackles the terrible tragedy of Marcinelle, 66 years later: his "reuse" of images is intended to inform. He delves into what has already been photographed to unearth a meaning that has remained buried, a soul within the mechanical body. He contextualizes, historicizes.

And so the images pass before our eyes: a woman orphaned as a child; the face of another woman behind the bars that separate her from the tragic truth; the lined-up coffins; the poster to recruit mine workers; the miners' huts; the daunting elevator for descending into the depths of the earth. And, lastly, the portrait of Urbano Ciacci, the last survivor of the tragedy.

Maurizio Galimberti (Como, 1956) has been active on the international art scene for over 30 years. He is world-famous also for his portraits of stars like Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro and Johnny Depp. He was a world testimonial for Polaroid International and critics now consider him an instant artist, rather than just a photographer.