Born in Brescia in 1960, he began to photograph at the age of 14 and then later together with with to Ennio Rassiotti to found “service Photogroup Brescia” professional laboratory of press.
After years of experience in the darkroom developing the photographic search, he passes behind the objective and works for important newspapers like Condè Nast, Rizzoli, Mondadori and Rusconi.
In 1994 he wins, like Italian portraitpainters, KODAK EUROPEAN GOLD AWARD Professional Portrait Photoraphy Awards For Excellence in Professional Portrait Photography.
Since 1995 he is enrolled as professional Photographer to the Association Photographers Professionals (SIAF) in which ZOOM publishs his portfolio. In the same year “Evolution” exposes his works for six months under consideration of A2 Brescia and begins to sign some printed advertising campaigns in Italy and Europe like Lumberjack, Lamperti Light etc..
In 1996 he is represented by Carla Pozzi of the study “Image of Milan” and at the same time he turns out to be one of the founders of the photographic group “Corrente 95”.
In 1997 in the exhibition space “The Olmocolmo”, running with group “Corrente 95”, he contributes to the topic “Photographers between the flowers”, and in the same year he participates in “The Annual World Press Photo of the Year organized Contest” from The World Press Photo Foundation and moreover he is chosen from the musical group Timoria for the publication of their cover which shows white eggs.
In 1998 at the competition “HASSELBLAD OPEN the international photo contest“ he is awarded with the title “great master for creative excellence”.
Running with group “Corrente 95” in 2000, at Palace Gonzaga di Volta Mantovana, he participates in homage to “Man Ray” and in 2001 he participates in the manifestation “Be Simple” in Brescia.
In 2000, 2002 and 2003 he participates with the Cultural Association GLIDE DOWN to the “Grandesign Photo Remix” in Milan.
From 2001 to 2004 he works, with an US-governmental contract inside of several European American Military Bases and documents the first familiar meeting of the first re-enter of troupes from the Iraq of 173° the Brigade dislocated in Vicenza.
In 2002 he introduces to Biennial of Brescia the artwork “Cops of the world”, composed by a series of portraits of american soldiers from Italian bases, assembled in an only one great world from the proportions distorted under the flag to stars and strips.
In the 2004 he is reproposed to the Biennial of Brescia with the artwork “Welcome Back”.
In 2005 as “imagegroupservice” Scholarship always sponsors the 1° of the competition young photographers “Claudio Colombo” he gets the sponsorship of the Municipality of Brescia and in the same year as service photographic Laboratory “photo imagegroup” Brescia he prints the book “1995-2005 Real Summer in Italy - miracle of Guglielmo Pelliccioli”.
Since January 2007 he curates the exhibition “Le8Quinte” with Ezio Mereghetti near service Photogroup in Tree-lined avenue Piave 95 Brescia.
In January 2008 he achieves the certificate Photo Editing Workshop for the management dl, image editing, formed rows, room raw 4, photoshop CS3, non- destructive techniques, levels and masks of level, methods of fusion levels, selections, techniques of presentations and Photo manipulation.
In september 2008 the “Bresciaoggi” newspaper publishes an article that proposes the images released in the American Base of Vicenza, that it accommodates from American 173th air-transported Brigade, that had participated in the war in north-Iraq.
Mauro documents photographies of re-enters of the soldiers from the forehead describing the tenderness of the embraces with the wives and the sons remained in Vicenza to attend them.
28 February 2009 he exposes on invitation to resigns of Contemporary Art “Art market inSATURA “ in Genoa, by Clear Guarneri, that it accommodates cracking of the artistic world, through the testimony of beyond fifty artists, painters, sculptors and photographers.
When you look at the photographies of Mauro Maffina for the first time you do not recognize, you do not understand. It is the problem of all the avant-garde artists that they are one step ahead and that it is difficult here to enter at that stage. The vanguards manipulate, experiment, and try out; they are some kind of troublesome nature because they obligate to think, to strain beyond the visual appearance, but they are the prints that after years make us find the road that we were trying but did not succeed to see.
In the world of Mauro´s photos you do not dip yourself in stories first, superficial look, deeply various: ingenuous images, alarming, apparently sometimes often enigmatic, where first of all the graphical job leaves you being astonished. The elaboration of the photography types puts them in the hands of “those who search” a new instrument whose potential still has not been completely inquired. The deformations, the grafts, the overlaps of the photographies of Maffina activate this potential as if it was a new kind of color or innovative material of support allowing us to say that his work is not just simple photography but a parallelism to the pictorial avante-garde. This new artistic and graphical elaboration of the image, like almost all new solutions which came to existence in the past, by the most are looked upon in a snob-like way so as if they do not belong to photography. And this is the result that is brought to life by Maffinas everlasting experimentations.
The break in his artistic work of about four years during the passage from analog to digital photography demonstrates the sincerity of Mauro Maffina. Work in order not to follow the rules creates disorientation and therefore, before using, you must understand, take confidence, love.
In his search we find the subjects of consume-orientated POP-Art, the children´s dreams of surrealism, traces of the experimentations of Roy Lichtenstein: The start of an individual artistic search is following the way other artists have already walked and then start to learn, react and develop something new. His first works play with objects of simple daily paper, fragments that are animated, and being recomposed becoming animals, flowers, persons. The presence of life seems to be what has to be manipulated and “technologized” in order to become real. And the distance continues with the well known game of symmetries being mirrored, overturned, rendering the things infinite, altering their substance in one, unconscious, superb perhaps creation of new beings. The deformation is the protagonist of other works, but it is not those angular formations, alarming of the German Expressionism that tell us about anguish and inner torments, but that happy, soft of the French, that gives us an imagination of wanting a wider and bigger road because it is the content of love that fills up the life in this moment, as the alteration of the colors fill up the heat of a landscape. A Landscape where the sunflowers of the first period return, but now they are not anymore technological compositions but cans in search of their own soul, true flowers, that are symbolically turned not towards a sun that has burnt the sky but, newly, towards “love” because, and this is the message: “Love” is the only true sun of our human existence.
In his last works, like “Papamere”, the metaphorical language becomes more arduous, plus more introspective. It is a return to the nature, to that dark earth on which the sunlight carves shadows into, to that earth that during sunrise fills the eyes with those deep colors that taste like the generous fruits of summer; and where this pleasant and idyllic countryside scenario is raped by the presence of razorblades connecting to ideas of blood suicide and death. But it is a generous wound that it emits, like a laser, washes incandescent, it washes what it burns then but, beneficial, enriches the earth. Then the topic of light that returns like a source of hope. And the disc of a valve that it inquires is not just a simple citation of Lichtenstein but a symbolic element that digs in the past and finds again the four red poppies, the four great loves that give sense to life. |
