Antonio Martinelli

After reading Mildred Archer's Early Views India, Antonio Martinelli discovers the artistic work and adventures of English artists Thomas and William Daniell (respectively uncle and nephew), who began at the end of the 19th century a trip through the Indian subcontinent. During their travels they produced many drawings and watercolors (of cities, palaces, fortresses, temples and Indian natural wonders), helped by a camera Camera Obscura. Upon their return to England they created, from their drawings, a long series of aquatints. These were published in six volumes (for a total of 144 aquatints) under the title Oriental Scenery.

In 2015, he responded to an order from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the exhibition and catalog Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy.

Between 2010 and 2011, in the wake of his previous work based on the Daniell engravings, he suggested to the Paris Guimet Museum a similar project for an exhibition called "Lucknow at the Mirror of Time" about the mythical city of Lucknow, in the North of India. This time though, the project is based on a comparison between the nineteenth century photos and the corresponding photos of today.

Between 1995 and 2005, Antonio Martinelli worked on the Daniell/Martinelli project under the patronage of UNESCO. The project and its related exhibitions led to books published internationally under the names: Oriental Scenery: Yesterday & Today; Travels to India, Yesterday and Today; and Passaggi in India: Ieri e Oggi.

From the end of 1995 and after extensive research work, Antonio Martinelli undertook to follow the same route as the Daniell through four trips to India. Thanks to the Daniell diaries, he identified with certainty the places visited by the two artists two hundred years before. He then positioned his camera in the same place where the artists had installed their own Camera Obscura, so as to obtain the same point of view and be able to show next to each other the old views and contemporary photos. The extraordinary results led to the publication of books in France, UK and India, and to several exhibitions: Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta in 2000, Paris in 2005, and Rome and New Delhi in 2011.

Venetian photographer and architect by training, Antonio Martinelli graduated from Università Iuav di Venezia (Istituto Universitario di Architettura Venezia). Established in Paris since the late 1980s, he has earned an international reputation for his long and extensive photographic experience in the fields of architecture and heritage.

The collaboration with Domus and the Biennale opened for Martinelli the doors of the Venice Arsenal, for a work documenting the first exhibition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture: La Strada Novissima, installed in 1980 in the long Corderie building. The first photographer to have documented the Arsenal interiors, he continued this exploration for the book of Giorgio Bellavitis L’Arsenale di Venezia Storia di una grande struttura urbana (Marsilio Edition, 1983).

The photographer's interest for architecture and landscapes also led him to work for the Italian Touring Club and the publisher Franco Maria Ricci (FMR and AD Architectural Digest). From 1980, he began his collaboration with Japanese architecture magazine A + U Architecture & Urbanism, for which he carried out numerous reports and monographs on global architecture.

In 1979, Domus magazine commissioned to the photographer a report on the construction and installation of the Teatro del Mondo in Venice, a work by architect Aldo Rossi sponsored by the Venice Biennale. Antonio Martinelli followed the evolution of the work, from the laying of the structure's first pole on the barge to the introduction into the waters of the Teatro, through to the maiden voyage in the mist of the Venetian lagoon towards the Punta della Dogana, at the entrance of the Grand Canal. After that, he accompanied the Teatro on his journey to the Adriatic Sea until Dubrovnik.

In 1972, Martinelli set out to discover the Indian subcontinent. This trip marked the beginning of a long and passionate frequentation of India that will lead to multiple photographic projects for many publications and exhibitions throughout Europe, in New York and in India.

Antonio Martinelli is a French-Italian photographer born on September 30, 1953 in Venice, Italy. He currently lives in Paris.