MARIA VITTORIA BACKHAUS
Maria Vittoria Backhaus (Milan, 1942) studied scenography at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts; in those years he frequented the legendary Bar Jamaica, focal center of the Milanese art scene, crowded among others by photographers such as Ugo Mulas, Alfa Castaldi and Mario Dondero. He began his career in the second half of the 1960s as a photojournalist of cultural, political and musical events in the beat scene.
However, the difficulties encountered as a female photographer in the world of information push her in another direction.
In the early '80s he began collaborating with L'Uomo Vogue and Casa Vogue and since then he specialized in still life, fashion and design photography, immediately developing an original and transgressive style, approaching the world of fashion with a ironic and critical: photography for Maria Vittoria is a means of documenting the real and fashion the exaltation of the superfluous.
Talent, certainty of taste, expertise in lighting and inexhaustible creativity, supported by scenography studies that push her to create elaborate and surprising sets, define the unique style of this icon of Italian photography. Always attentive to contemporaneity, current events and ongoing social changes, Maria Vittoria Backhaus changes the rules of fashion, still life and design photography, taking an interest in what an image can tell the world rather than the object to be portrayed. viewer.
In addition to the many photos taken on commission, there are many works on personal projects which are currently at the center of his activity together with saving his archive.
In 2021 he received the Arturo Ghergo Lifetime Achievement Award and in the same year he moved his home and studio to Piedmont.
From 31 March to 25 June 2023, the Middle MonFest, the interlude year of the Casale Monferrato Biennale, with the artistic direction of Mariateresa Cerretelli and the curatorship of Luciano Bobba and Angelo Ferrillo presented in the Chagall Rooms of the Casale Castle: Maria Vittoria Backhaus, My stories beyond photography, her first major anthology in Italy.
His photographs have been published in the most important magazines such as Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Casa Vogue, Case da Abitare, Abitare, Io Donna; he has shot campaigns for international fashion and design brands, primarily the twenty-year collaboration with Flexform
