The frame, as the bright image
obtained without the camera, is the secret of photography.
In that, it is revealed the unique feature of the photographic process.
The frame opens up new perspectives on a visual language
still completely unknown and governed by its own laws. 

                                                                              László Moholy Nagy, 1936

Bold and versatile artist, Nino Migliori followed, as a key player, the linguistic evolution of photography within the Italian cultural context.

His debut was in the postwar years, when the awkward presence of the film industry led him to face with the unprecedented feeling of freedom and enthusiasm that led the reconstruction of the Country: it is the school of Neorealism.

Within this movement Migliori stands with a production able to build an expressive bridge with the European avant-gardes. Certainly, from a neorealist photographer, makes use of black and white and depicts the world around him, but he already works for short bursts, shifting its focus towards the conceptual universe, which had already passed the idea of the "photographic" mirror of reality.

From grayscale sequences to the exaltation of the particular on colors film, there is a short step and, exactly in this passage, Nino Migiori inaugurates his personal path of knowledge, based on experimentation that characterizes his whole career. As in the succession of exploratory levels, the first works give way to reflection on the spontaneity of the sign, caught on rough urban surfaces: it's the time of "ripped Posters " and "Walls", made in the years since the '50s.

Afterwards, the series "Time slowed down" arrives symbolic exaltation of nature and its fruits, despite the incongruous relationship with the man who produces the image of a "still life" still alive.

Much more new is the production of "Cuprum", the unpublished work of the artist from Bologna, who delights in the wet traces of beer glasses on London pub tables. The result is the charm and the illusion of a fairy tale that takes the physiognomic and colors variations of the moon. The exhibition "Nino Migliori - Charme and Illusion" proposes, in chronological order, all these works, to express and make their own idea of a continuity test, that in the production of the Bolognese author is realized on different levels (or layers) of styles and contents.

The photographs proposal for this event, infact, even they tell only part of the extraordinary creative course of Nino Migliori, they manage to reconstruct with great clarity the many landings expressive that, over time, have followed as input of new and modern visual explorations. The photographic identity is the main characteristic of the works on display, all inspire, for principle and formal coherence, by its own laws that the great Moholy Nagy, within the nascent Bauhaus, in 1936, led back to a visual language still completely unknown.

In this sense, and through the tireless technical experimentation and conceptual of his artistic production, Nino Migliori has always been considered a staunch supporter of the inevitability of change photo due to its being technology. Otherwise, to quote his own words, we still stuck to the daguerreotypes. - Denis Curti

Nino Migliori (Bologna, 1926) began to photograph in 1948 playing one of the most articulated and interesting European image culture. The beginnings appear divided between realistic photography, with a particular idea of the story in sequence, and experimentation with materials completely original and unpublished. This research will continue over time involving other materials and techniques such as Polaroid and bleaching. From the late Sixties the work of Migliori assumes conceptual valences, and this is the direction that tends to prevail in the following years.

Nino Migliori is the author who best represents the extraordinary adventure of photography that takes values from a documentation tool and content related to art, experimentation and play. His works are held in major public and private collections, including Mambo, Bologna; Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; CSAC, Parma; Museum of Contemporary Art Pecci, Prato; National Engraving, Rome; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; SFMOMA, San Francisco.