THE WORLD OF
MARIA VITTORIA BACKHAUS
IS MADE UP OF MANY STORIES.
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Her photographs are never an end to themselves, they are captured moments, part of a more complex script.
She is a prominent figure in the scene of Italian photography. Her works are published in major Italian and International fashion and design magazines. She also works on advertising campaigns and catalogues for the beauty, fashion and design industries.
She graduated in theatre design at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, before starting her career as a photographic reporter of news, cultural and political events, beat singers in the mid-sixties. Later on, she changed to studio work, shooting mainly interiors and still-life, but soon beginning also with fashion. This meant a passage from small and medium cameras in black and white to color pictures in large format, shot with a Swiss Sinar 4 x 5 inches and a wooden American Deardorff 8 x 10 inches, which she also normally used for fashion shooting. For almost ten years, until the end of the nineties, a great part of her work, in particular the fashion pictures, was realized in big-colour Polaroid films (Polaroid 809). The brief but intense work with fashion designer Walter Albini and the long collaboration with Vogue and other monthly magazines, both falling in this period, had a relevant role in her professional development. In the same period, she also used the SX Polaroid, developing the technique of mounting and rephotographing the resulting composition of a lot of shots to arrive at the final image.
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Then, in the late nineties, another big change: she wanted to experience the collaboration with a more popular weekly magazine. And so, for over ten years, she worked regularly for Io Donna where besides fashion, still-life and interiors, she created a new way of photographing food.
During the last years, she also began to explore personal photographic research, to save (rescue?) the massive analogic and digital archive.
In 2021 she received the ARTURO GHERGO career award. In 2023 during the MONFEST in Casale Monferrato an anthological exhibition has shown her 50 years of photograpy.
In 2024 she exhibited in the group show, curated by Angela Madesani, “Sguardi di Intesa” at the Saint-Bénin Center in Aosta and, in the same year, participated in the exhibition “Il Vittoriale delle Italiane” curated by Renato Corsini.
Maria Vittoria Backhaus is considered a leading photographer for fashion, design, and accessories such as jewelry, giftware, and food.
She graduated in set design from the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera. In the 1960s she switched to photography working as a reporter and covering cultural, political, and musical events of the beat scene.
She then turned to fashion, design, and still-life photography in the very years when these sectors were at their peak.
She works in the studio and outside, using large and medium formats. It is never important to her what she photographs but a narrative around what she photographs. In addition to the many photos taken on commission, there are many works on personal projects that are currently the focus of her work along with saving her archive.
In 2021 he received the Lifetime Achievement award Arturo received the lifetime achievement award for Arturo his home and studio in Monferrato.