Luciano Rigolini (born 2 August 1950)[1] is a Swiss artist, photographer, bookmaker, producer, and former commissioning editor at Arte in Paris. Swiss Grand Award for Design 2024, the highest honour for Swiss designer and photographers assigned by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC)
Since 2002 he has been working in photography exclusively through appropriation and rereading of amateur images and industrial documents. His work is also expressed through several author's books. Parr and Badger include Surrogates (2012) in the third volume of their photobook history. They write: "In Surrogates, he has taken as his source imagery spare parts for vintage cars available for sale on eBay. He then retouches and greatly enlarges them, presenting them on plain or colour-field backgrounds so that they become re-contextualized as formal images, stripped from their former function".[8]Private/Used (2013) is a book of photographs of women in lingerie, selling their used underwear on eBay.[9]Mask (2015) is a collection of grilles of cars made in Detroit between 1955 and 1962.[9]
He taught Cinema and Photography in several Universities, including the Rice University of Houston, the Sci-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture), the Head (Geneva University of Art and Design)
[10] and the Documentary Master of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.[11] In 2024 Luciano Rigolini won the Swiss Grand Award for Design, the highest honour for Swiss designer and photographers assigned by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC)
Publications
Luciano Rigolini: Fotografie '90–'92. Lugano: Museo Cantonale d'Arte [de], 1992. OCLC81900321. Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, 1992/93. German and Italian.
Luciano Rigolini: Città aperta-Open City, Photographs 1990-1995. Catalog, Houston: Farish Gallery, Rice University School of Architecture, 1995.
The worlds of silence (2001) – director (with Silvana Bezzola)[31]
Naomi Kawase, Kya ka ra ba (2001) – commissioning editor Arte France
Angela Ricci Lucchi, Yervant Gianikian, Images d’orient-Tourisme vandale (2001) – commissioning editor Arte France
Alexandre Sokourov, Elegie de la traversée (2001) – commissioning editor Arte France
Serguei Dvortsevoi, In the dark (2002) – commissioning editor Arte France
Avi Mograbi, August, A moment before the eruption (2002) – commissioning editor Arte France
Chantal Akerman, De l’autre côté (2002) – commissioning editor Arte France
Chris Marker, Chats Perches (2004) – commissioning editor Arte France
David Teboul, Bania (2005) – commissioning editor Arte France
Lech Kowalski, East of paradise (2005) – commissioning editor Arte France
Naomi Kawase, Tarachime (2006) – commissioning editor Arte France
Naomi Kawase, Chiri (2012) – commissioning editor Arte France
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mekong Hotel (2012) – commissioning editor Arte France
Photo l’Integrale. Les Gands courants Photographiques, Une collection documentaire proposée par Luciano Rigolini, Arte France Editions, Paris (2009-2013)
Tsai Ming-linag, Walker-Journey to the west (2014) – commissioning editor Arte France
Laurie Anderson, Heart of a dog (2015) – commissioning editor Arte France[32]