PESCIA.- From June 4 to September 6, 2026, the foundation presents The Last Photographer – Giovanni Savino, curated by Marta Convalle. The exhibition brings together a selection of images born from the artist’s encounters with people and objects that have stood before the lenses of his many cameras. Special attention is given to his portraits with closed eyes: images in which he captures dreams, thoughts, and details of the face that we often overlook, drawn instead to the depth of the eyes.

Giovanni Savino was born in Pistoia, but is effectively a New Yorker, as life took him abroad early, first to England and then to the United States.

At first, he wanted to be a musician — a trumpet player, to be precise. Later, he considered becoming an acoustic engineer, a documentary filmmaker, and finally a photographer, an activity that has accompanied him constantly throughout his life. He has worked in cinema and television; he has been a sound technician, director, and producer. He began with British television networks before collaborating for years with CBS on 60 Minutes in New York and around the world, which he documented extensively through his lenses.

He has met and photographed personalities of all kinds, from Gorbachev to Clinton, and has documented some of the most dramatic events of the last 40 years, from the collapse of the Twin Towers to the earthquake in Haiti.

In recent years, he has returned to Italy. He lives in Pitigliano, in the province of Grosseto, and has rediscovered his early love of portraiture, which he first explored in one of the most significant places of his journey: the Caribbean, especially Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which he portrayed in four documentaries.

“The last photographer” still works in the old way, with tools that are old by age but capable of producing unique works: pneumatic shutters, film, old paper, and the darkroom.

For him, photography is an encounter. A photograph is not made by the photographer alone, nor by the person in front of the camera, but by both together, shaped by the chemistry that arises between them in an unrepeatable instant.

For several years, he has liked to call himself “the last photographer.” As he explains:

“Where everyone wants to be first, I like to be last.

Those who know me or see me work might think I call myself ‘the last’ because I am certainly one of the last to use ancient techniques and old cameras.

My way of creating images is not very orthodox and almost never scientific: rather, it is guided by the intrinsic poetry I find in what I observe and by the tactile simplicity of my wooden cameras.

I am tired of the sterile, counterproductive, and pathetic competition that has always existed in photography and art, summed up by the famous composer Béla Bartók in his phrase: ‘Competition is for horses, not artists.’

I have chosen not to take part in the senseless race to be the best, the cleverest, the most famous, the richest, number one.

Proclaiming myself last gives me freedom in all my successes and failures, allowing me to silently distill unique and precious lessons from both.

Truly important photographs are very few in the life of a photographer.

I believe those few images are not entirely human phenomena, but largely supernatural ones: the image I long to see revealed under the red light of the darkroom does not depend on an illustrious CV or prestigious prizes, but on a humble, courageous, daily practice.

The artist must always seek new alchemical possibilities to interpret indefinable energies through their work, so as to be amazed by the often unexpected result, of which they are only partly the material executor.”

The exhibition opens with a miscellany of thirty large-format black-and-white photographs, measuring 70 x 100 cm, along the foundation’s entrance wall. This is followed by thirteen black-and-white photographs of the same size in the Refettorio, dedicated to food and conviviality.

On the first floor, in the Sala Maurizio Del Ministro, the exhibition moves into a more intimate and suspended dimension with seventeen large-format black-and-white photographs from the Eyes Closed series. In the Sala Francesco, the route concludes with a selection of miniatures and the only two color portraits in the exhibition, showing the same face first with eyes open and then again with eyes closed.

The catalogue, published by Edizioni Fondazione POMA Liberatutti in the PomArte series and curated by Marta Convalle, includes critical essays by Rosa Pierno and Paolo Tesi and biographical fragments edited by Alberto Demagistris.

The exhibition opens on Thursday, June 4, 2026, at 6:30 p.m., in the presence of the artist, the curator, the catalogue contributors, and Paolo Trinci, president of Fondazione POMA Liberatutti.

The exhibition is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon and from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Admission is free, with no requirement to register with the foundation.