Enzo Ragazzini (b. Rome, 1934) is an Italian photographer and Op-Art pioneer. He began his photographic activity in the 1950’s, when photographers were still uncommon in Italy, experimenting with “photomechanics” in a garage darkroom he built by himself. For the 1960 Olympics in Rome, three murals of his revolutionary “optically altered” images of boxers, wrestlers, and basketballers were integrated into the Palazzetto dello Sport dell’Eur designed by Pierluigi Nervi. In 1965, he moved to London, and was featured in the ICA’s first photography exhibition (1969) Four Photographers in Contrast, while also having a solo show at Modern Art Oxford for his abstract imagery. While Ragazzini created work out of a personal search, using self-taught techniques, his “Swinging London” period coincided with the “Op-Art Boom” of the 60’s and 70’s; abstract images were commissioned from him to illustrate numerous Penguin editions, accompany When I’m Sixty-Four in The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, and one of the first covers of Time Out Magazine. In 72’, his work was featured in the English Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.
Ragazzini moved back to Italy in the mid-1970’s, continuing his pioneering work in a series of projects and solo exhibitions, while receiving numerous assignments to travel around the world for publications and media sources. For the turn of the 21st century, the MACRO Contemporary Art Museum in Rome held Luci Rosse, centered on his optic alteration of erotic images, put in relation to the “Red Lights” of a darkroom. Recent series’ include Creature and Sculptures from the studio, where Ragazzini plays around with found objects, textures, and surfaces; interior and exterior worlds of his imaginary constituted over a lifetime of experiment, accumulation, travel, excursion, and observation. He is based in Tuscany.
Epiphany is thus the revelation of a secret quality that things, faces, or moments in time possess, transcending their apparent and often trivial significance. It comes about through a privileged perception which unravels an object before us while retaining its concrete nature. I cannot find a less approximate example for the enchanting work of Enzo Ragazzini and the apparent zig-zagging nature of his method. When he picks out a gaze, freezes a detail, or even elaborates or twists an image, a point of light, or a series of numbers, he does not impose his own vision or do violence upon his subject, which on the contrary he surrounds with a great love and respect. His photographs (and I am not only thinking of his optically abstract work, in which a point of departure from reality is evidently distant, or even lost) do not have a given social environment or narrative intention. They are fragments of reality chosen with a glance that appears casual, and through which Ragazzini is able to perceive a hidden, often poignant truth.
- Boris Bianchieri, writer and diplomat.
Life can be both sickening and healing. The darkroom was what calmed me; if you can profit from it, life is the greatest medicine; it is the beautiful and harmonious relationship one has with one's own work.
