The great portrait master and acclaimed fashion photographer suffered from complications with COVID-19.

Italian photographer Giovanni Gastel passed away today, from complications&nbsp;of COVID-19. Famous for his cinematic&nbsp;portraits and disruptive irony, his style of photographing has changed the perception of the image of fashion: elegant, refined, and spontaneous, all at the same time.&nbsp;

Gastel was born in Milan on December 27, 1955 to Giuseppe Gastel and Ida Visconti di Modrone, as the youngest of seven children. His career as a photographer began in a basement in Milan towards the end of the &#39;70s, where Gastel, very young, spent his long years of apprenticeship taking photos and learning the basic techniques of a profession that would later lead him to success. Between &#39;75 and &#39;76,&nbsp;he worked for the prestigious London auction house Christie&#39;s, putting into practice what he had learned.

The turning point of his career came in 1981 when he met Carla Ghiglieri, who became his agent and brought him closer to the world of fashion: after the publication of his first still life in the Italian magazine Annabella, in 1982, he began to collaborate with Vogue Italia and, then, thanks to the meeting with Flavio Lucchini&mdash;Director of Edimoda&mdash;and Gisella Borioli, with Mondo Uomo and Donna.

Between the &#39;80s and&#39; 90s, Gastel&#39;s career in the fashion world explodes parallel to the boom of &quot;Made in Italy.&quot;&nbsp;In those years, Gastel developed advertising campaigns for the most prestigious Italian fashion houses including <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/madonna-donatella-versace-tribute" target="_blank">Versace</a>, Missoni, Tod&#39;s, Trussardi, Krizia, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion-week/salvatore-ferragamo-future-positive-fall-winter-2021" target="_blank">Ferragamo</a>, and many others. Success in his country also brought him to Paris&mdash;where, in the 90s ,he worked for brands such as <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/christian-dior-iconic-styles-bags-shoes" target="_blank">Dior</a>, Nina Ricci, and Guerlain&mdash;as well as to the United Kingdom and Spain.

Although his career began in the world of fashion, Gastel (photographer and, at the same time, also a poet) quickly understands that his impulse of expression also requires projects with purely artistic purposes. The artistic consecration was not long in coming and, in 1997, the Milan Triennale dedicated a personal exhibition curated by the great art critic Germano Celant to him. The exhibition launches Gastel at the top of the world photographic elite and his professional success is consolidated so much that his name appears in specialized magazines alongside that of sacred giants&nbsp;of Italian photography such as Oliviero Toscani, Giampaolo Barbieri, Ferdinando Scianna and legends internationals such as <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/pop-culture/helmut-newton-nude-photography-book" target="_blank">Helmut Newton</a>, Richard Avedon, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/art/fashion-coffee-table-books-chanel-dior" target="_blank">Annie Leibovitz</a>, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/multiple-high-level-fashion-photographers-accused-of-sexual-assault" target="_blank">Mario Testino</a>, and J&uuml;rgen Teller.

Professional success opens the door to another side of Gastel&#39;s photographic repertoire that had remained unexplored until the end of the 2000s: the Portrait. In recent years, Gastel had&nbsp;found himself passionate about this branch of photography and, as he had&nbsp;always done in his career, immersed&nbsp;himself totally in it. His work culminates in an exhibition at the Maxxi Museum in Rome in the year 2020 with a selection of 200 portraits that portray the faces of people from the world of culture, design, art, fashion, music, entertainment and politics that Gastel himself met during his 40-year career. Some of the noteworthy portraits include <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/men/obama-nike-hyperdunk-sneakers-price" target="_blank">Barack Obama</a>, Ettore Sottsass, Roberto Bolle, and Marco Pannella.

Giovanni Gastel was a member of the Board of Directors of the Museum of Contemporary Photography&mdash;an institutional partner of the Triennale di Milano&mdash;and of the Board of Directors of the IEO-CCM Foundation.

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Photographer Giovanni Gastel Dies at 65 from Coronavirus

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Photographer Giovanni Gastel Dies at 65 from Coronavirus

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