portrait of the photographer Elisabetta Riccio in Miami

Elisabetta Riccio

is a freelance photographer from Turin, Italy.
She was born in Turin in 1986 and graduated from the Politecnico di Torino with a degree in Architecture, but photography has always been her first love. She travels around the world to get inspiration for her artistic and photojournalism projects, using different printing techniques with both lm and digital media.

The years between 2012 and 2017 were a period of strong personal artistic growth as she worked with international street artists and travelled with them between America and Asia.
She turned her lens on the most vital and least known urban landscapes, revealing the poetic power that exudes from those walls and streets.

From her hometown in Italy to Asia and North America, she focuses on the transformation of urban and social spaces. Elisabetta Riccio has crafted narratives through loose and mysterious suburban scenes, desolate spaces and stylized portraits.

Her travels have taken her from Italy to New York, New Jersey, Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Taipei, Shanghai, Malaysia and the Navajo lands in Arizona. Her work has been exhibited in Monaco, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Turin, New York and Miami.

Urban exploration and fine art photography

“More photographs exist than bricks,” wrote Peter Turner in the introduction to his History of Photography (1990). Although it’s true that any attempt to historicise photography is doomed to be incomplete, every snapshot a photographer creates, in telling his story, is a brick that builds the house of his gaze.

That of Elisabetta Riccio, traces the geographies of her wandering through the abandoned cracks of an industrial city, Turin, and the sweeping horizons of her American explorations.

In her reportage “ID-ENTITY, the Fragmentation of a Moment”, she explored the archeology of abandoned industrial areas which were looking for a new identity; she showed the naked skeleton of a city, Turin, that was in the process of transforming itself. In 2011 this project received a special award from the Dante Alighieri Foundation in Berlin, where it is still exhibited.

RES.TI.TU.ZIO.NE (Restitution) is a series of photographs, in perfect Urbex style, of old abandoned buildings, forgotten hidden places and changing metropolitan landscapes that recount a past that doesn’t exist anymore. As in her previous work related to urban cityscapes, she brings an architect’s eye to the project. She also focuses on shifting social spaces.

Other documentaries

Fine Art projects of Elisabetta Riccio

Photographic portraits of life

IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE is a photo-investigation of the Navajo Nation living on the largest reservation in the US.

Her CLAUSUS series was a more intimate and local one, in an Italian convent of cloistered nuns who had taken a vow of silence. She lived with them for some time in order to tell their story through her photographs.

Other portraits photography project of Elisabetta Riccio

Education

  • 2011 – Politecnico di Torino (Turin, Italia) – Graduation in Architecture
  • 2013 – IED: Istituto Europeo di Design (Turin, Italia) – Master di Fotografia
  • 2015 – Artist Residency with Magnum photogrpaher Alex Webb
  • 2016 – Masterclass in Digital Storytelling – ICP  International Center of Photography

Group exhibitions

  • 2010  Lab+Loft25, Torino (IT)
  • 2010  Fondazione Dante Alighieri, Berlino (DE)
  • 2010  Castello del Valentino, Torino (IT)
  • 2011  Immagini d’immagini, Palazzo Carignano, Torino (IT)
  • 2012  Pretty Portal Gallery, Dusseldorf  (DE)
  • 2012  Galo Art Gallery, Torino (IT)
  • 2013  Stroke Art Fair, Munchen (DE)
  • 2013  Allegra la Viola Gallery, New York (USA)
  • 2013  “Shoot For The Moon”, Wynwood Embassy, Miami (FL)
  • 2014  “Miami Marine Stadium Fall Benefit Exhibit, Gregg Shienbaum, Miami (FL)
  • 2016  Reflexions, Camera – Centro italiano per la Fotografia, Torino (IT)
  • 2016, Reflexions, Collettiva con Alex Webb , Sala Mostre Piazza Castello, Torino (IT) 
  • 2016  Reflexions, La Morra (IT)
  • 2016  Reflexions, Roma (IT)
  • 2016  Jazz Festivall, esposizione all’aperto, Torino (IT)
  • 2016  “Street Sans frontiere”, Parigi (FR)
  • 2017  “Street Art Volant”, Museo della Scrittura Torino (FR)
  • 2018   Ri-corrente sogno, Laboratorio Artistico 34 , Torino (IT)
  • 2018   Museo Nazionale di Ravenna , Ravenna (IT)
  • 2018 ARTISTS HOUSE, Tel Aviv( Israel)
  • 2019 Galerie Joseph Turenne, Paris (FR)
  • 2019 Voies Off Festival • Arles (FR)
  • 2019 Galerie Joseph Turenne,  Paris Photo Off Paris (FR)

Awards

Publications