Elio Ciol was born in 1929 in Italy, where he lives and works after having spent several stages of life in different cities in Europe. Ciol’s photographs are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York; Centre for Creative Photography Tucson, Arizona; Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas, Austin; The Art Museum, Princeton University, New Jersey; Centre Canadian for Architecture, Montreal Canada; The Art Institute of Chicago; The University College of Wales, Aberystwyth; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi; Civici Musei e Gallerie di Storia e Arte, Udine; Galleria di Arte Contemporanea Pro Civitate Christiana, Assisi.
Elio Ciol has shown his photos in 102 individual exhibitions, which have been critically acclaimed, and in another 112 group exhibitions. Ciol has also illustrated more than 190 books with his photos. He is definitely considered as one of the great Italian masters of landscape photography and he is known not only for the perfect quality of the technique and the prin t, but also for some special lyricism of the subject he uses to choose and for the poetic imagination it evokes .
His images take us to another temporal rhythm but not to another time . His landscapes are full of controversy: they are calm but in the same way enigmatic, sharp and equilibrated but some photographs in black and white are also full of fog. These images invite us to go beyond appearances, reminding us of how things have different consistency and how, according to different points of view, everything can change such as his landscapes really change. Through his perception the photographer reads and interprets all the surroundings; he shares his knowledge and shares the world he lives in. Even if the images of Ciol reflect reality, it is the manifestation of his philosophy that he expresses through photography.
