Fotografen - Einzelansicht

"Giancolombo, alias Gian Battista Colombo, was born in 1921 in Venice. He spends his teens in his home town, showing a deep interest in photography, from the age of eleven.
War forced Colombo, such as most of his contemporaries, to break off his studies at university. For five years his fate has been hung over, as he joins the army in Albany, France, Poland and back to Italy.
Once he returns to be a civilian, he decides to get its flavor back dropping his studies for his huge passion, photography. Then he moves to Milan and opportunity is right down the corner. Colombo is in Milan when Federico Patellani was leaving his job as photoreporter at the newsdesk of Corriere Lombardo newspaper, at that time directed by Angelo Magliano; at once Colombo gets hired as "reporter with the camera".
The photographer is also obliged to the newsdesk of Corriere Lombardo for his nickname: in 1946, due to a print error, one of his picture is credited to
"Giancolombo", which becomes his pseudonym.
One year later, a picture he shot to De Gasperi is aired all around the world making him famous. United Press Photo offeres Giancolombo the direction of the journalistic service for Northern Italy and soon he also becomes the official photoreporter for the Editorial Group Palazzi (publishing newspapers such as Corriere Lombardo and Corriere di Milano, beside the weekly magazine Tempo).
But Giancolombo aims for more. In 1950, right in the same seat at Palazzo dei Giornali at Piazza Cavour, Milan, he resigns from his job at the United Press Photo to found Giancolombo News Pictures The success is immediate.
Prestigious French magazine Paris Match is the first to ask the agency for its correspondence from Northern Italy; meanwhile the major foreign photo agencies get his material to distribute it and sell it worldwide.
Giancolombo News Pictures moulds some of the most important italian reporters, such as Gianfranco Moroldo, Gillo Faedi, Luigi Tonali, Vittorio Sparviero, Giorgio Lotti, Giannino Gelmi, Lucio Berzioli, Gabriele Milani, Luigi Vacchi, and many others who contributed to make the Milanese agency famous worldwide.
It's a restless escalation: Europeo, Tempo, Panorama, Settimo Giorno, Oggi, Gente, Grazia, Epoca, Visto, Le Ore, that is the most prestigious names of Italian weekly press are all clients of Giancolombo.
On the International market, the agency can rely on publications such as Life, Picture Post, Schweizer Illustriert, Stern, Jour de France, Daily Express, besides Paris Match.
From Bellentani murder at Villa d'Este to Churchill bathing at Venice Lido, not to mention the Romanov-Gherardesca wedding, Giancolombo agency wins some of the most celebrated scoops in the world, still remembered nowadays.
His reportages get stocked in the memory for their intensity, such as landscapes of small towns and big cities, in Italy and abroad, published by magazine Illustrazione Italiana, edited by Livio Garzanti.
All the most important personalities out of art, politics, sport, showbiz, get immortalized by unique portraits shot by photographers of Giancolombo News Pictures.
In 1964, with the collaboration of his friends and colleagues, Giancolombo founded F.I.A., the first Italian Association of Photoreporters. He has been its chairman for ten years, until he resigned in occasion of his enrolment ad honorem to the Order of Italian Journalists.
For two years Giancolombo has also been the vice-president of AFIP (Italian Association of Professional Photographers), as well as active member of AIRF (Italian Association of Photo Reporters)."

www.contrasto.it

"Contrasto is a unique enterprise in the field of photography. Contrasto was born in the 80's to be a point of reference for quality photojournalism.

The agency's photographers, in addition to its close contact with the information and culture worlds, allows Contrasto to be a leader in the field of author photography.

Its vast range of activities (production and distribution of images for journalism, advertising and image consulting, fashion and publishing, archives available online) is guaranteed by the various resources it draws from; Most notably Magnum, the prestigious agency founded by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Contrasto is publishing house as well, working to realize photographic books, and exhibits in cooperation with Italy's public and private institutions.

The high level of Contrasto photographers' amounts to a gallery of unique images suitable for collecting purposes as well."

www.contrasto.it