About Me
Photographer Ghigo Roli works in Italy and abroad, boasting extensive experience in various sectors: cultural heritage, geographical and travel photography, aerial photography, facsimile reproductions, and vintage vehicle photography. He is renowned for his high-resolution Gigapixel photography, through which he completed a major photographic campaign of the entire Sistine Chapel at a 1:1 scale.
He manages complex photographic campaigns from initial concept to final production, overcoming organizational and technical challenges. Of particular historical and artistic significance was his work illustrating a complete atlas of over 2000 subjects in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. The precious images from this project were used for restorations following the 1997 earthquake.
He has dedicated much of his career to the publishing sector, publishing about forty books on art and geography, as well as numerous travel guides for Italian and international publishers.
He has also produced countless commissioned reportages for some of the most prestigious international magazines.
I was born in Modena in 1956. Four years later, my father gave me an old Kodak Brownie (itself a wedding gift from my grandfather to him). My first photo was of the temple of Paestum. It took a while because in the viewfinder I saw the columns all leaning, and I didn't shoot until, after repeated insistence, a tall and patient older brother took me onto a rock and picked me up: finally, the columns were straight! That must have been when I got the idea that photography serves to put a little order into the world.
A few more years passed, and then came the bicycle and a Comet Bencini, and with them the discovery of freedom. Every day I explored a new street in my city and took a new photo. I didn't know anything about Vittorio Sella or the Istituto Geografico De Agostini yet, but that little camera was my passport to enter the world and search for its meaning—for it and for me. At twelve, I began to develop and print black and white in a small clandestine darkroom. I left "Mickey Mouse" for "Progresso Fotografico" and "Fotografia Italiana," which marked me for life.
At thirteen, during one of my explorations, I happened upon Piazzale Redecocca, in a degraded neighborhood that still had houses bombed during the war. There was a kindergarten party, homemade games, cloth balls that children slightly younger than me threw at empty peeled tomato cans. I shot an entire roll of 72 photos with my Canon Demi C, rangefinder, and three lenses. The teachers, intrigued, asked me for the photos. A few days later, I sold my first reportage for the equivalent of a pack of photosensitive paper: those teachers, whose names I do not know, have on their conscience the weight of having created another professional photographer.