Ferdinando Scianna started taking photographs in the 1960s while studying
 literature, philosophy and art history at the University of Palermo. It was then
 that he began to photograph the Sicilian people systematically. Feste Religiose
 in Sicilia (1965) included an essay by the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia, and
 it was the first of many collaborations with famous writers.
 In 2002 Scianna completed Quelli di Bagheria, a book on his home town in
 Sicily, in which he tries to reconstruct the atmosphere of his youth through
 writings and photographs of Bagheria and the people who live there.

"A photograph is not created by a photographer. What they does is just to open a little window and capture
it. The world then writes itself on the film. The act of the photographer is closer to reading than it is to
writing. They are the readers of the world."  Ferdinando Scianna. Visit Bagheria in America

Ferdinando Scianna joined Magnum Photos in 1982 and became a full Member in 1989. More...

"His photography is almost a rapid, fast organization of reality, a catalyzation of objective reality in
photographic reality: that almost everything on which his eye looks at and its objective points at obeys right
at that time, either before nor afterwards, for instant magnetism, to his sentiment, to his will and - ultimately
- to his style."

"Some people claim to always have the last word, and that is what Scianna does with the last photograph. He
opens and closes his eyes and you can hear the sliding of lamellas that swallow a piece of reality and
Leonardo Sciascia is right when he writes to have the impression that the reality will organize itself exorcized
by the look of this photographer. Reality organizes itself, that is poses, and the eyes of Scianna know this
ability of exorcism. It looks at me or it always call me between one travel and another, hunting for fashion
models in a world transformed into a scenario of the market of fashion, and his fashion photographs are
disturbing because they reach the category of masks of bodies to which it is given the condition of codes."

 Born in Palermo, she moved to Milano and studied music at the
 Conservatory, in 1975 she moved to India and devoted herself to meditation
 and got specialised in oriental music. From 1978 to 1982 she lived in the USA
 and in 1982, back in Palermo, she started photo reporting for the daily
 newspaper L’Ora with her mother Letizia Battaglia. Her pictures portray
 Sicily’s political and social world during the years of the mafia war. Women and
 the Mafia, one of Shobha’s most important photo reportages, was published by
leading newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Shobha is a versatile photographer, involved with
fashion pictures too, always seen mainly from a social viewpoint. In 1998 Shobha received the World Press
Photo Award for a reportage on Sicily’s aristocracy, a project which took over twenty years to complete and
in 1999 became an exhibition and a book titled The last Gattopardi cared by Paolo Falcone and published by
Contrasto. Shobha’s works have been published by leading newspapers and magazines in Italy and abroad,
among which (to mention just a few): Geo, Zeit Magazine, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Sunday
Times, the weekly supplements of La Repubblica and the Corriere della Sera, Specchio, L’Espresso, and
Vanity Fair. Presently Shobha lives between Palermo and India, where she keeps organising photo
reportages and artistic projects and in 2007 opened the school of photography Mother India.
More...

 Andrea Di Fiore’s work is best known for its poetic union of both traditional
 and digital media. Translating her work into the triumphs and tribulations of
 humanity. A native New Yorker, she is a Fine Arts graduate of The School of
 Visual Arts. The artist has been involved in many group exhibitions around the
 city. Including a group exhibit at the Fordham University Voices of Italian
 Women: Keepers of the Cultural Flame, she exhibited work from her Uova
 Series with video animations and an installation of prints. She received a
 monetary award through FIERI, an Italian American organization. Subsequently
 having a solo exhibition at the Laumont Gallery on 52nd Street from the same
 body of work. The Italian television company RAI did an interview with Ms Di
 Fiore about her work for RAI international TV. She has also been involved in
charities and donated a piece from her new collection, Drowned Flowers. The
piece was auctioned off and bought by gallery owner Frank Maresca of the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in Chelsea
NYC. The monies went to the charity, God’s Love We Deliver and the elementary school, PS11 also in
Chelsea, NYC. Several prints from the work Drowned Flowers have been sold privately. Ms. DiFiore continues
to live and work in New York with her daughter and supplements her income with work as a high-end digital
photo-retoucher for many prestigious companies, including Christian Dior and Rolling Stone magazine.
See her Gallery... Visit her website