Carla Cerati (Bergamo 1926 - Milan 2016) transformed her youthful artistic flair into a passion for photography that led her to make her first professional images of theater and then, in the 1960s, to investigate the world of youth by collaborating with newspapers such as L'Illustrazione Italiana and L'Espresso. Then she documents the theatrical avant-garde (Kantor, Carmelo Bene, the Living Theater) and the protagonists of the cultural world to marry the social commitment that leads her to make important reportages and to sign with Gianni Berengo Gardin the fundamental volume “Morire di classe.” She finally devoted herself to a careful photographic reflection on the female body. Also important was her activity as a writer.

Carla Cerati’s complex professional career fits perfectly between these two images. When, in the late 1960s, Franco Basaglia began his campaign to close the mental asylums, true prisons that denied dignity to those who were not treated but imprisoned, an important contribution to the victory of the law that bears his name was made by that small but powerful book published by Einaudi in 1969, bearing the beautiful title ‘Morire di classe’ (Dying of Class), which Carla Cerati co-authored with Gianni Berengo Gardin. The close-up shots of the faces of people to whom no one paid any attention indicate a desire to establish contact in order to restore to them the dignity that was trampled upon every day. The framing that intersects the subjects lends the image a dynamism that seems to point towards hope. When, however, Carla Cerati encountered the extraordinarily innovative experience of the Living Theatre, she became so captivated that she followed the American troupe on their tours, constantly photographing their performances. She would then sometimes transform her images – as in this case – by cropping a section to emphasise a gesture, an expression, a glance.