Franco Fontana
Creative Horizon

  • Italy
  • en
  • en
  • 28'
Franco Fontana | Creative Horizon
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Synopsis

Franco Fontana expresses in this film all the joy that the act of framing represents for him. With erudite enthusiasm, he reveals his secrets. For the landscapes that made him famous, it is a rigorous framing of fields that leads to abstraction. For him, colour must be reinvented. His greatest satisfaction? It’s when one of his photographs is used to represent an idea, a thought. 

There is undeniably a mystique of framing and colour in Fontana’s work, and if he mentions in the film Paul Klee, Mark Rothko, or the great painters of Abstract Expressionism, it is because he shares with them a sense of colour, rhythm, and pared-down form. But we also discover that it is through the tireless fragmentation of reality with his telephoto lens that he works, isolating his “painting” within the fabric of the real. 

That is how he also leaves his mark on a wheat field, an American hangar, a streak of asphalt on the ground, or a nude body by the edge of a blue swimming pool. Lines, colours almost in flat planes, his photographic gaze is intense and indefatigable.

What you will find in this film

A gaze in colour • The rigour of the frame • A philosophy of photography • Photographing with a telephoto lens • A reflection on abstraction.

Keywords

Nature & Landscape Masters of Photography Creative & Exhibition Photography The Artist at Work
Photography is you. It’s the part of you that brings everything together. The subject doesn’t exist. You are the subject. You are the witness.
These are things that were found, not looked for. If you go looking, you won’t find.
The photograph is real, because I’ve captured a piece of reality. It’s the photographer’s way of thinking that is abstract.
I wanted to stay true to who I was: a free spirit who wakes up in the morning and, like the Latins, lives each day as it comes.

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The authors/artists

Franco Fontana
Franco Fontana
Photographer
Giorgio Horn
Giorgio Horn
Film Director

Further exploration

Bibliography

Resources

Instagram

Corrado Benigni, Mauro Zanchi (eds.) – Franco Fontana. Dietro l’invisibile, Silvana Editoriale, 2018.

Franco Fontana – Skyline (texts: Claude Nori, Helmut Gernsheim), Éditions Contrejour, 2013 (orig. 1978). 

Franco Fontana – America (preface: Muriel Adrien), Éditions Contrejour, 2020. 

Franco Fontana – Invisible, Five Continents Editions, 2022/2023. 

Franco Fontana – Franco Fontana. Retrospective (exhibition catalog; publisher: Contrasto), Contrasto, 2025. 

The 90-year-old photographer who brings out the colors of the city – EL PAÍS

Franco Fontana: Urbani – Atlas Gallery 

Franco Fontana. Retrospective – Turismo Roma

Franco Fontana (IVAM exhibition text) – IVAM  

Franco Fontana. Retrospective – Civita Mostre e Musei