Olivo Barbieri


Olivo Barbieri is an Italian artist and photographer of urban environments.
He is recognized for his innovative technique creating miniature still photography from actual landscapes by simulating shallow depth of field via the use of tilt-shift lens photography. Barbieri's technique simulates the shallow depth of field effect of macro photography by tilting the lens's angle to the back plane of the camera, which creates a gradual blurring at the top and bottom edges, or left and right edges of the filmed image. The technique is called selected focus and the effect is that a picture of an actual city looks like the picture of a model.

Career

Barbieri began his career in photography studying at DAMS at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Bologna. After 1971, his interest in photography grew and, initially, he focused his research on artificial lighting. In 1978, he took part in several exhibitions in Italy and also abroad. In 1989 he started to travel regularly to the Far East, particularly to China.
In 1993, 1995 and 1997 Barbieri exhibited his work at the Venice Biennale, among other international exhibitions, and in galleries and museums throughout Europe, North America, and China. In 1996, the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, devoted a retrospective to his work, which has been collected by museums worldwide. In 1998 and 1999, his work was featured in two exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
In 2003 Barbieri started the Site Specific project describing cities like Rome, Turin, Montreal, Amman, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Siviglia, New York and others. He has realised several 35mm films within this project:
Site specific_ROMA 04 was exhibited in 2005 at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, at the Hayward Gallery of London and at Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto.

Films

In 2005 he also started two series of movies called Seascape# and Riverscape#, which include:
Other movies realised by Barbieri are:
Barbieri's films have been presented in the most important international festivals, including:
He lives and works in Milan.

Books

Several books and catalogues have been published on Barbieri's work, including:
Barbieri has won several awards and prizes for his work: