He was born in the province of Lucca in 1944 and has lived in Los Angeles since 1969. His photos are part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. His work includes an exhibition at the motorbike club The Chosen Few, which later merged into the 2014 documentary Take None Give None. In the same year, he started publishing “Fotofolio”, an underground journal of black and white photography.
1963. Gusmano Cesaretti, 19 years old, a passion for the ‘American dream’, a camera and a one-way ticket to New York. Thus was born the incredible story of ‘The Picture Man’, the man who, from the province of Lucca, without speaking English, landed in the United States, becoming perhaps the most authoritative and direct eye on American subcultures.
First in Chicago, then in Los Angeles, Gusmano and his camera are one and the same, his eye documenting first-hand the urban subcultures of the time: metropolitan jazz, the beat generation, the East L.A. of the Chicanos, the Mexican mystical experiences. He is in the right place at the right time, a direct and reliable eyewitness, with his raw, instinctive, vibrant and authentic style of so-called street photography, contributing to the genesis of the Western collective imagination. He later worked, as director of photography and image consultant, alongside some of the most influential directors of late 20th century American cinema, such as Michael Mann, Tony Scott and Marc Forster.
It is a life ‘on film’ that of Gusmano, traced in this book thanks to an interview conducted in 2018 by young photographer and creative director Stefano Lemon, who outlines his human experience and artistic career. 168 pages and 85 photographs, most of which have never been published, recount the stages of an extraordinary journey that began more than fifty years earlier, creating a sort of magical passing of the baton.
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Photographs by Gusmano Cesaretti
Preface by Jeffrey Deitch, Chaz Bojorquez
Texts by Stefano Lemon
Calligraphy by Luca Barcellona
Book design by Bunker
17 × 25 cm
168 pages
Swiss style paperback
English/Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-38-5
First published November 2021