Salvo Galano

Salvo Galano is a portrait photographer whose work explores the encounter with others and the creation of a moment of trust in front of the camera. He began photographing at the age of fourteen, when he discovered that a camera made him feel more at ease than a guitar or a soccer ball. He has never stopped since.

After studying Advertising Graphics and specializing in Photography in Milan, he moved to London in 1989, where he began working in the editorial field. From 1995 to 2001, he lived in New York, collaborating with Italian and international magazines and producing advertising campaigns. In 1998, thanks to a project on a community in the Amazon rainforest, he was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York.

From that experience came Sidewalk Stories (PowerHouse Books, NY), followed by Facial Landscapes (Cappelletti Arte Contemporanea) and L’isola (Peliti Associati), three books that explore the human face as a landscape and a narrative of identity. His photographs have been exhibited in Italy, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Serbia, and Spain. At a certain point, he felt the need to take his perspective elsewhere, physically as well.

This led to two underwater exhibitions: Passaggio a Sud-Est (2014), in the waters of the island of Ponza, and Stars – Humanity Is the Best Blessing of Mankind (2016), in the sea of Lampedusa, conceived as a reflection on integration at the symbolic heart of European migration flows. Bringing photography to another depth represented a natural step for him. He lives and works between editorial, advertising, design, and exhibition projects, maintaining a constant focus on portraiture as a space of relationship and on photography as a shared experience.