Goodbye Mimmo Jodice – Naples – Arte.it

Mimmo Jodice, Athlete of the Villa dei Papiri1986 | © Mimmo Jodice

Naples – He died on October 27, 2025, at the age of 91, Mimmo Jodiceextraordinary photographer and reference figure of contemporary Italian photography. Born in Naples in 1934, Jodice took up photography in the early 1960s, after a period devoted to painting and drawing. His language immediately stood out for its formal and conceptual research that led him to explore the relationship between time, memory and visual reality. From 1970 to 1996 he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where he trained generations of young photographers and artists. His work spans more than half a century of history and remains faithful to a black-and-white vision full of silences and suspensions. In his shots, the city, the ruins, the sea and the faces become places of the soul, symbols of a constant tension between ancient and modern. In the 1960s and 1970s, Jodice came into contact with avant-garde movements such as Pop Art, Arte Povera and Fluxus, where he collaborated with artists such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and Robert Rauschenberg. Since the late 1980s, the human figure has gradually disappeared from his images, creating space for metaphysical landscapes and architecture suspended in time. Recognized as one of the most important voices in twentieth-century photography, he received the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for Photography in 2003 and his works became part of the most important international collections and museums. With Mimmo Jodice, witness to the Mediterranean light, the archeology of everyday life and the memory of places disappear, but his visual legacy will continue to inspire generations of photographers and artists around the world.