Unidentified Modern City

Gabriele Basilico (Milan, 1944-2013) is considered one of the masters of contemporary photography. After graduating in architecture in 1973, he devoted his life to photography. The transformations of the contemporary landscape, the form and identity of the city and the metropolis all served as Gabriele Basilico's privileged fields of research. “Milano ritratti di fabbriche” (1978-80) was the first of his works to focus on outlying industrial areas. In 1984-85 he took part in the Mission Photographique de la DATAR, the project set up by the French government and entrusted to a group of international photographers with the aim of representing the transformation of the national countryside. In 1991 he took part in a mission to Beirut, a city devastated by fifteen years of civil war. Basilico was awarded numerous prizes, and his works are to be found in prestigious public and private collections, both in Italy and around the world. During his career, he published over sixty books of his own works.

Dan Graham (1942-2022) was a highly influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both as an artist and as a well-respected critic and theorist. He was the founding director of the John Daniels Gallery (1964–1965), where he presented Sol LeWitt's first solo exhibition and showed works by Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Robert Smithson. Graham is known for his early conceptual work for magazines, his groundbreaking video work, and his site-specific architectural pavilions.