Fosco maraini biography

Fosco Maraini was an anthropologist, traveller, climber and photographer. Of Ticino origin, he was born in Florence and grew up among the masterpieces of the Renaissance. While still very young, an irrepressible attraction drove him south, to visit Sicily and to the east, to Tibet, to the Karakorum and to Japan. The documentary pays homage to one of the greatest Italian ethnologists and explorers, recounting his passion for adventure, love and everything that he encountered along his path.

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Maraini was born and died in Florence.

As a photographer, Maraini is perhaps best known for his work in Tibet and Japan. The visual record Maraini captured in images of Tibet and on the Ainu people of Hokkaid? has gained significance as historical documentation of two disappearing cultures. His work was recognized with a 2002 award from the Photographic Society of Japan, citing his fine-art photos...and especially his impressions of Hokkaido's Ainu. The society also acknowledged his efforts to strengthen ties between Japan and Italy over 60 years. Maraini also photographed extensively in the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges of Central Asia, in Southeast Asia and in the southern regions of his native Italy.

As an anthropologist and ethnographer, he is known especially for his published observations and accounts of his travels with Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci during two expeditions to Tibet, first in 1937 and again in 1948.

As a mountaineer, he is perhaps best known for the 1959 ascent of Saraghar and for his published accounts of this and other Himalayan climbs. As a climber in the Himalayas, he was moved to describe it as "the greatest museum of shape and form on earth."

From 1938 to 1943, Maraini's academic career progressed in Japan, teaching first in Hokkaido (1938—1941) and then in Kyoto (1941—1943); but what he himself observed and learned during those years may be more important that what he may have taught. Dacia, his eldest daughter, would decades later recall that "the first trip I took was on the sea from Brindisi to Kobe." Two of his three daughters were born in Japan. After the Italians signed an armistice with the allies in World War II, the Japanese authorities demanded Maraini sign an act of allegiance to Mussolini's puppet Republic of Salò. He refused, and was interned with his family in a concentration camp at Nagoya for two years.

Fosco Maraini was an Italian photographer, writer, mountaineer, and anthropologist born in Florence in 1912. In 1935 he married the painter Topazia Alliata and later became well-known for the accounts of his expeditions in Tibet. During the Second World War he lived in Japan, where he worked as a lecturer of Italian language in various cities. For two years he was imprisoned in the Nagoya concentration camp. Maraini travelled extensively in Japan, Central Asia, North Africa, and Italy, and he organized numerous photographic exhibitions in Europe and Japan. Many of his photos illustrate the books he published. He died at the age of 91 in 2004. 

The collection includes 26 photographs taken by Fosco Maraini in Sicily between 1950 and 1952. These include views of various places such as antiquities in Selinunte, Segesta, and Agrigento, monuments and houses in Trapani, mosaics in Palermo, and the Villa Valguarnera in Bagheria, in which the Maraini family lived in the 1950's. Other images show local people in small towns around Sicily and the Aeolian islands as well as landscape views from mount Etna and Taormina. 

Fosco Maraini (Italian:[ˈfoskomaraˈiːni,ˈfɔs-]; 15 November 1912 – 8 June 2004) was an Italian photographer, anthropologist, ethnologist, writer, mountaineer and academic.

Biography

He was born in Florence from the Italian sculptor Antonio Maraini (1886–1963) and Cornelia Edith "Yoï" Crosse also known as Yoï Crosse-Pawlowska (1877–1944), a model and writer of English and Polish descent who was born in Tállya, Hungary. As a photographer, Fosco Maraini is perhaps best known for his work in Tibet and Japan. The visual record Maraini captured in images of Tibet and on the Ainu people of Hokkaidō has gained significance as historical documentation of two disappearing cultures. His work was recognized with a 2002 award from the Photographic Society of Japan, citing his fine-art photos—and especially his impressions of Hokkaido's Ainu. The society also acknowledged his efforts to strengthen ties between Japan and Italy over 60 years. Maraini also photographed extensively in the Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges of Central Asia, in Southeast Asia and in the southern regions of his native Italy.

As an anthropologist and ethnographer, he is known for his published observations and accounts of his travels with Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci during two expeditions to Tibet, first in 1937 and again in 1948.

As a mountaineer, he is perhaps best known for the 1959 ascent of Saraghrar and for his pub