Carlo Orsi, poet with the Leica, died. Milan, Buzzati, the Dolomites- Corriere.it

by time news

The first word that comes to mind when thinking of Carlo Orsi is “integrity”. A rare and passionate way of being in the world that has marked his doing, with photography at the center. Something that makes this farewell painful because we are talking about an unforgettable person and author as shy, not at all willing to compromise, to self-promotion, with whom we have traveled, worked, dreamed. He was moved by nothing, he went into a beast for a while, thus concealing a surprising delicacy.

Carlo Orsi in one of his favorite portraits (Carlo Orsi Archive)

It was always and only his original images that spoke, poetic, irreverent, realized along a career that began very young, as an assistant to Ugo Mulas. Milan, the Jamaica Bar and the “Corriere della Sera” a stone’s throw from home. Born in via Solferino, 8 March 1941. Artists hungry for everything and the big newspaper as the banks of a geography that has influenced his career. Reporter and chronicler to make a living, Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni to cross another universe, to define their own style, influenced by the intellectual refinements of those who painted, sculpted in a city overflowing with energy. It was his sensitivity that transformed him into the traveling companion of Arnaldo Pomodoro, whose image he has been taking care of since 1984, of Valerio Adami, Emilio Tadini, Gianfranco Pardi, while he was also dedicated to other things. Fashionable, working for the most important Italian and foreign newspapers, advertising, creating a series of memorable campaigns for La Perla, Omsa, Swatch, American System, Philip Morris, Ducati, Alias, Cassina, Catellani & Smith. The Leica in your hands, the black and white film, its very rolled “Rs” to explain an intention, a vision.


In Carlo’s photographs there are women masters of their own freedom, there is urban architecture, a lively humanity. There are his passions. For Milan, the Dolomites, engines, conviviality and art. And there is always a marked journalistic aspiration. What led him to make the book in 1965 Milano with Dino Buzzati (magnificent and almost impossible to find), repeated fifty years later with the texts of Aldo Nove; the volume éxtasi on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opera Single Act, Jannis Kounellis and books in collaboration with Interplast, an association of volunteers in reconstructive surgery, followed by Orsi in Tibet, Uganda, China, Bangladesh and Bolivia.

In 1997, together with his wife Silvana and lifelong friends (Emilio Tadini, Gianfranco Pardi, Guido Vergani, Giorgio Terruzzi), he founded the magazine “Città” to tell about Milan with the contribution of the greatest photographers, from Francesco Cito to Francesco Zizola, to Elliott Erwitt. “The most beautiful newspaper in the world” he said, thinking of a new issue to be published by 2021.

He had remained a great reporter until the end, within the creative dimension of an inventor of images. Some of these have made history, such as the cast iron in white uniform resting on the balustrade of the Duomo metro stop, against the background of the design by Franco Albini and the writings of Bob Noorda. Or like the aching humanity of the Southern trains at the Centrale, with cardboard suitcases and certain faces in chiaroscuro that outline fears and hopes.

He loved to hike off the routes, in the border areas, towards i wasteland of the city where even the counter of a bar, a pool table or a bowling club suggested a portrait, inspired a story to take away. Five years ago, as if to fill a void in an extraordinary career, he had accepted the invitation of the Corriere and accompanied the reporter on a journey in search of people out of the ordinary. It was the antechamber of the good news in which Carlo Orsi believed, and some encounters with people capable of transmitting positive examples, redemption and humanity remain unforgettable: their stories moved him. One of the latest photos, that of Ada Comoretto, owner of Thermoelectric, a symbol of artisan resistance to the fashionable invasion in Corso Como in Milan, has now become a gigantic showcase. Certain shots, to review them, speak, authenticate, express feelings, indignation, hopes.

This is a greeting to a friend carried away by an aggressive tumor, and it is a struggle to deal with the absence of a person who made himself heard with few words. They fly now like clouds, in the magnificent skies of his photographs.

June 1, 2021 (change June 1, 2021 | 21:05)

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1 comment

Giuseppe June 2, 2021 - 9:29 am

Ciao Carlo , fai buon viaggio !

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