Giuseppe Leone - The Great Sicilian
A wonderful 'humaniste' photographer
Giuseppe Leone: Train on a viaduct
He didn’t look 80, more like 60! We shake hands. He lifts my old M6 from my chest to see if there is a screen on the back. There isn’t. A big smile spreads across his face and he gives me the thumbs up. It turns out that for many years, Giuseppe Leone has been photographing with the same analogue Leica. He still does. He still uses film and develops and prints his own work. My kind of photographer!
Giuseppe Leone: Stone walls with tree
At Corso Vittorio Veneto 131 in Ragusa, Sicily, Giuseppe Leone keeps a studio with a window to the street showing classic black and white portraits – three framed and hanging in a row – facing the street. It looks like your traditional family photographer. He might come to your children’s school to do the class photograph. It might be a place you would visit to commemorate special occasions, such as weddings, or round birthdays. But, if you walk up a couple of steps and open the door, you start to see that there is a lot more going on here than simply portraits on demand.
On the ground floor, you get a glimpse of the Sicily that we should all be eternally grateful that Mr. Leone has captured and preserved for over 60 years. If you are fortunate enough to be invited upstairs, you will enter a large space that with a few extra steps opens into the neighbouring building. Here you find lots of Mr. Leone’s photographs from across Sicily. All sizes, some mounted some not, some framed in simple black frames. All a little random, but the photographs are wonderful. This is also where he has his studio and does his portrait commissions. On the third floor is the darkroom. Throughout, he has a few small glass-front cabinets that hold old camera gear and photographs. With pride he pulls out an old daguerreotype portrait to show me that he is part of a long line of photographers who have served humanity by making a permanent record of friends, family and strangers alike.
Mr. Leone shows me several photographs of the island that he very rarely leaves. There are photographs of the miles and miles of dry-stone walls, a testament to the tough life working the fields, where topsoil is mixed with endless rocks, large and small. There is a record of great architecture influenced by all the invaders and occupiers of Sicily; Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spaniards, Piedmontese and….. There is no place in Europe that I can think of, able to boast this kind of happy co-existence in architecture, landscapes and the genetic make-up of its people.
Giuseppe Leone: Religious festival
It is with the people of Sicily that Mr. Leone is at his best. His people. The peasants going to church, going to the market, tending their sheep, cows and goats. There are celebrations of religious festivals, of which Sicily has so many. There are photographs of children playing and of course weddings, funerals and first communions. Giuseppe Leone captures the people of the island, in a manner the French would call ‘humaniste’. He tells me that he particularly likes to photograph children at play, who are often improvising with the absolute minimum of tools, making the most of a cardboard box and a vivid imagination. There is a lot of Helen Levitt in these photographs.
Giuseppe Leone: Children playing
Mr. Leone still runs a commercial photography studio for portraits, and has engaged widely in wedding photography along with other commissions to feed his personal pleasure of making great photographs of his island. The Sicily that he loves.
Looking at his photographs, it is evident that he has a wonderful ability to tell the story. Even among his wedding photographs, which are often terribly repetitive and perhaps even boring to those that weren’t there, there are great examples of Mr. Leone’s keen eye: The bride is headed towards the getaway vehicle, multiple generations of family and friends are looking on. An old woman sits on a chair, her arms around a grandchild, or great-grandchild, with a priceless look of disapproval on her face. It seems that even when working, Giuseppe Leone cannot help himself. It is in his blood.
Giuseppe Leone: The Bride
Mr. Leone is a skilled photographer. A large photograph at the top of the stairs Mr. Leone claims as his first. It is also the first image you see on his website, and the first image in this post, though the photograph is much more impressive in person. Between pointing in the direction of the bridge in the photograph, and with a little help from his studio assistant, I am told he made this photograph in his mid-teens. It shows a steam train with a string of tanker railcars crossing a very tall arched bridge, below in the deep valley, a narrow silver steam snakes along a wide floodplain, the unmistakable silhouette of the big dome of the Duomo in old Ragusa is in the background. The air is misty, perhaps mixed with the smoke from the train giving the photograph a soft filtered light. The photograph is bold. Taken almost directly into the sun. Great skill, or unbelievably good luck, I have no idea, but given all the great photographs that came after, there is no doubt that Giuseppe Leone has great skill and a keen eye. He can be present, yet anonymous among his people, the villages and towns, hills and valleys that make up the great island of Sicily. He understands Sicily. Maybe this is because Mr. Leone has always been here.
One of the photographs – two actually – that I fell in love with a few years after my visit to Mr. Leone’s studio was from Leone’s series of famous Sicilian authors. The two photographs are of Andrea Camilleri. Camilleri to all the writers here will be well known, as the very successful author of the series of books featuring Chief-Inspector Montalbano. A series of police mysteries set in Sicily. Montalbano was turned into a television series, which has led to a steady flow of visitors to the island, looking for specific locations from specific episodes…. My immediate reaction to these two photographs is how relaxed Camilleri is and how he in an almost child-like fashion is posing, but not posing for Leone’s camera. I have checked in various place where there are photographs of Camilleri, including book jackets, as well as online, and there are no other images of him that are as endearing, and beautiful as these two. Clearly, Mr. Leone was able to get inside the personal space of Andrea Camilleri and capture something very special.
Giuseppe Leone: Andrea Camilleri
It is no surprise that Camilleri and Leone got along so well. Both work with the people of Sicily and both do a terrific job of taking you there. Montalbano books are not really about the crime. They are about Sicily, as are Giuseppe Leoni’s photographs.
I met Giuseppe Leone, the Sicilian Master photographer in the summer of 2017. This is my memory of that day, as recorded at the time. Giuseppe Leone passed away in April last year at the age of 87.
You can see more of Giuseppe Leone’s photographs on his website:
http://www.giuseppeleone.it/
Miraculously, it is still up, despite his passing. I do not know what is happening to his estate, nor what will happen to his great body of work. I hope it lands safely in a place where we can all enjoy it and celebrate the life and times of Giuseppe Leone.
this is beautiful and touching, great write!
Amazing