With 90 photographs, some of them exhibited for the first time, ‘Daniele Tamagni Style Is Life’ will open to the public on Friday, February 9, 2024, at Palazzo Morando|Costume Moda Immagine in Milan. Curated by Aïda Muluneh and Chiara Bardelli Nonino, and promoted and organised by the Daniele Tamagni Foundation in collaboration with the Municipality of Milan, it is the first major retrospective of the Milanese photographer, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 42. Tamagni won prestigious international awards such as the Canon Young Photographer Award in 2007, the ICP Infinity Award in 2010, and the World Press Photo Award in 2011. The exhibition, showcasing a selection of the artist work developed throughout seven years, will remain open until April 1, 2024.
Daniele Tamagni was an internationally renowned photographer whose innovative perspective merged photojournalism, street photography, and fashion into a distinctive style. Documenting street fashion styles and trends, he was able to capture their political and often subversive value, and to portray them as a form of identity. Chiara Bardelli Nonino, the co-curator, underlined how Tamagni s approach to fashion wasn t immediately accepted and recognised by the fashion industry: Daniele wanted to create connections and to know the subjects he was portraying, their stories, the messages and ideas they wanted to communicate through clothes.
The exhibition begins with the Congolese sapeurs of the SAPE ("Società degli Animatori e delle Persone Eleganti", in English: Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People), also known as the "dandies" of Bacongo, a neighbourhood in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo. Tamagni s photographs showcase the style and colours of their clothing, details of accessories such as sunglasses, watches, and hats, as well as the taste and joy of life. The sapeurs, since the early 20th century, reinterpreted the style of French colonisers, using ostentation, luxury, and sophistication as tools of cultural resistance. The book “Gentlemen of Bacongo” inspired the fashion designer Paul Smith in the creation of his spring-summer 2010 collection. The exhibition also explores Tamagni s project on Botswana s metallers in 2012, capturing the afro-metal movement, and the colourful traditional costumes of ‘The Flying Cholitas’, Bolivian wrestlers challenging gender roles, wearing the colourful pollera skirt. The exhibition then delves into street photography featuring the young urban crews of Johannesburg, highlighting their use of fashion for identity repositioning in a reimagined and liberated society. Another section focuses on Dakar Fashion Week, where Tamagni captured the intimacy and spontaneity behind the scenes in Senegal.
As emphasised by the co-curator Aïda Muluneh, Tamagni s mission has always been to catch the richness of the African continent in terms of diversity and untold stories. In order to support emerging photographers in creating new narrations about Africa, the exhibition concludes with a section featuring the works of the first three winners of the Daniele Tamagni Grant, established by the foundation.
The monograph "Daniele Tamagni Style Is Life," published by Kehrer Verlag, accompanies the exhibition, enriched with contributions from various figures such as Tommaso Sacchi, Gianfranco Maraniello Director of Area Musei d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Alain Mabanckou, Angelo Ferracuti, Gerardo Mosquera, Emmanuelle Courreges, Lekgetho Makola and testimonies from Alessia Glaviano, Duro Olowu, Michele Smargiassi, Deborah Willis and many more.
