Guido Argentini

Guido Argentini was born in Florence, Italy.
He studied medicine for three years at the University of Florence.
At 23 he decided to turn his passion for photography into a profession and started to
shoot fashion and beauty.
Since 1990 he lives in the USA, in Los Angeles.
His work has been published by some of the leading magazines
in the world.
In 2003, Guido Argentini’s first book, SILVEREYE, presented an exquisite series of studio
and landscape nudes, a reflection of the artist’s great personal passion for sculpture and
dance.
In his second book, PRIVATE ROOMS, 2005, Guido Argentini offers an entirely different
type of personal journey, one where eroticism and beauty are clearly inseparable.
Within these pages, we are invited to take a glimpse into a unique “feminine universe”.
This second book is the result of ten years of photographs, all taken in the intimacy of
closed rooms, ancient villas, modern apartments, many hotels, from the most elegant
five-star locations enriched with luxurious velvets and four-posted beds to the most
squalid insignificant hourly-rate motels furnished with cheap plastic chairs and wornout
wallpaper; a universe where all these rooms become the theaters of the artist’s selfdirected
voyeuristic fantasies.
REFLECTIONS was published in 2007, a vast collection of photographs of women
looking at themselves in mirrors: a sort of unconscious research about the woman who
studies herself, falls in love, and gets lost in her own image.
In SHADES OF A WOMAN, 2010, Guido Argentini began exploring different levels and
nuances of the female nature.
The images are telling a story in one single picture, like single frames taken from a
movie.
ARGENTUM, published in 2013, is the final collection of Guido Argentini’s silver
photographs.
Evoking the luminous polished planes of the work of Brancusi and the verve of Degas’
ballet sketches, these photographs endow the human body with both the solidity of
sculpture and the vivid energy of dance.
Using geometrical props Guido Argentini created a contrast between the human body
and the archetypal forms of geometry: triangles, circles and squares. This book is a
collection of more than 100 photographs of women and men: dancers, gymnasts and
aerialists.
His latest project is the book “EROS” published in 2018.
From the abstract bodies coated with silver paint to the eroticism of Private Rooms
and Reflections, the need of telling stories has become more and more urgent for
Argentini.
The images of “EROS” are only suggesting stories to the viewers.
The use of the diptych, two images paired together, an image of a woman and a
photograph of a landscape or a still life helps to create a narrative.
These stories are still and silent they have no voice and no soundtrack. The stories
are only told by the emotions of their characters.
Each woman is dreaming and, at the same time, we, the viewers are dreaming of
each woman depicted in the book.
Imaginary women, imaginary places combined together with the magic of color that
become, in this last project, a major creative tool for Argentini.
Flipping through the pages we jump from antique palaces in Italy, to urban
landscapes in Japan to the desert of California.
As it always happens for a still photograph, it can only suggest a story.
It is only a single frame from a movie.
Every viewer will make his own film, will make up his own soundtrack and will
choose a different beginning and a different end, creating his own story.