Mario Giacomelli was born in Senigallia in 1925. At the age of 13 he began to work in a printing shop, an activity that will continue throughout his life. In 1952 he approaches photography, with the purchase of a camera and the shot of his first image, "L'approdo". He will become one of the major interpreters of this medium, internationally recognized. In 1953 he became part of the photographic group Misa and in 1956 of La Bussola. In 1955 he was celebrated by the then director of photography of the MoMA in New York John Szarkowski and began to obtain recognition and exhibit in Italy and abroad. Self-taught, he often combines his photographic works with poetic compositions, collecting his photographs in series. Among the best known projects, Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto,  known as The Priests,  images made in the Senigallia seminary; Scanno; Presa di coscienza sulla natura, the great series of aerial landscapes, which he began as early as the mid-fifties. Among the most recent works: Il mare dei miei racconti (1991-94), I am nobody (1994-95) on texts by Emily Dickinson up to Questo ricordo lo vorrei raccontare (1998-2000). He died in Senigallia in 2000. 

Mario Giacomelli's works are part of important public and private collections, such as: Bibliotheque National, Paris; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; High Museum, Atlanta; International Center of Photography, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Contemporary Art Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee; Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Australia; Puschkin State Museum, Moscow; Rencontres Internationales, Arles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; University of Parma; Victoria and Albert, London.