Biography
Pio Tarantini, academic and author, is an exponent of the Italian contemporary photography. He has lived and worked in Milan since 1973. He was born in 1950 and he went to school at Lecce’s Liceo Classico after which he moved to Milan in 1973 where he took a degree in Political Science at the city’s State University.
As a complement to his work as a photographer and a producer of images in the mid 1980s he also started to write about photography for a range of magazines and publications. He has taught Photographic Language and History of Photography He also holds courses and conferences on these themes at associations, state and public schools.
In the 1990s, he was invited to speak at a host of seminars on photography as part of courses at University faculties in Milan, including Political Science, Letters and Architecture. He also worked on a Visual Sociology project, Photometropolis, at the Faculty of Sociology at the Bicocca University of Milan. From 2003 to 2009 he collaborated with the Milan based art gallery Fotografia Italiana Arte Contemporanea with whom he realized two solo shows and various group shows and coordinated the editorial unit of the publication “Pagine di Fotografia Italiana”. He continues writing essays on photography and presentations of other photographers works. In 2011 he published “Fotografia. Elementi fondamentali di linguaggio, storia, stile” and in 2014 “Fotografia araba fenice. Note sparse tra fotografia, cultura e il mestiere di vivere”.
His works have been exhibited in private galleries and public venues in Italy and abroad since 1982. He has published numerous catalogues and monographs, and he is listed in many other catalogues of collective exhibitions. Some of his works are housed in public and private collections, such as CSAC (Communication Study Centre and Archive) of Parma, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea (Museum of Contemporary Photography) of Cinisello Balsamo, Collezione Alinari, Collezione Nicoletta Rusconi Arte Contemporanea.
Currently directs the the six-monthly magazine FC▪FOTOGRAFIA E[È] CULTURA.