page_title: Alberto Terrile
section_title: Experimental works; teaching
hierarchical_section_title: Alberto Terrile / Biography / Experimental works; teaching
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of Pasquale Montemurro by Alberto Terrile, 2010.
context_page_description: Alberto Terrile is an Italian-born photographer. Mostly known in France, Italy and the US for his work-in-progress about angels, he is also active in publishing, theatre, music, cinema and advertising. He specialises in black-and-white portraits, for which he has won several prizes; his most acclaimed works include live performances of Corrado Rustici, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Ute Lemper. Personal expositions of his pictures have taken place in Milan, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Avignon, Chicago, Montreal and Toronto.
context_section_description: Terrile has kept on experimenting with non-standard techniques and materials, probably reminiscent of his early years at the academy. One notable example is the print of one of his pictures on light marble. According to Terrile himself, the negative was first printed on AGFA Record Rapid paper (at that time already out of production), then digitally acquired and plotted on a marble slab using a Durst Rho 205 special plotter. "After two trials on marble" Terrile says "I decided to raise the highlights, so that the natural grain of the marble would shine through and give an original volume to the model's white dress, with the effect of enhancing the sculptorial quality of my image." The final result was part of an exhibition of marble sculptures held in 2004 in Carrara, Italy.
  Very unusual subjects, as well as a surrealistic use of post-production (in digital form too) and/or weird settings characterise some of his later production. Among the most original works, a set of portraits of disabled persons and their inner world based upon Alice in Wonderland, and a remarkable series of hyper-realistic digital portraits called Dalla miniera ("From the mine"). One of the most interesting pictures in this series depicts Pasquale Montemurro, a former pupil and assistant to Terrile, while squeezing his own head between his hands in resignment or desperation, a feeling elicited using violent contrast on the scalp. As opposed to this, the model's look is somehow serene. Montemurro, at the time also a close friend of Terrile, died of cancer in 2010 at the age of 45, a few months after the picture was taken.
  In recent times Terrile has also developed an interest in industrial architecture and abandoned buildings. Genoa, formerly a town of heavy industries and steel production now undergoing a somehow traumatic conversion, is a perfect location for this. The Cornigliano steel plant, recently shut down, and the Hennebique building, once a grain deposit of the harbour now home to junkies and tramps, are examples of this trend. In settings such as these Terrile and his pupils have portrayed a number of dressed up characters, creating an alienating semantic contrast.
  Terrile is also very active in teaching and dissemination. Since 2000 he has held yearly basic- and advanced-level photography courses, usually transferring to the advanced level some of the pupils of the basic courses. The advanced courses have therefore kept on accumulating new people, knowledge and experience – Terrile usually employs his pupils in his own professional activity – so that they represent nowadays a small but active community of amateur photographers in Genoa. In 2007 Terrile founded a non-profit society called Percorsi magici ("Magic paths"), devoted to the organisation of the courses, as well as of exhibitions, lectures, conferences and workshops. Terrile's teaching style is reported to be extremely informal and non-technical but highly practical.
caption: A portrait of Pasquale Montemurro from the series Dalla miniera, 2010
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