Monica Silva

Monica Silva Monica Silva is an internationally renowned Brazilian photographer. She is descended from her mother's side of the Guarani tribe in the Spirito Santo region and was born and raised in São Paulo. In 1986, she arrived in London to learn English and ended up becoming a model, television presenter, assistant director, and finally a photographer. She has been living in Italy for over 35 years and has dedicated her entire life since then to music and entertainment, creating amazing album covers and portraits of Italian and foreign celebrities, as well as top managers, intellectuals, and politicians. Famous are her photographs of the Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino, the enigmatic portrait of actor Toni Servillo, and the one depicting the art critic Gillo Dorfles, which was awarded best photo at the 2011 Venice Biennale.
Her works are reviewed with enthusiastic tones, and portraits of showbiz and cultural figures, along with her travel reportage, are constantly published in the most important national and international publications such as Corriere della  Sera, Sette, Io Donna, Max, Style, Dove, Panorama, Icon, La Repubblica, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, Wall Street Magazine, El Pais, Istoè, Harper's Bazaar, Le Figaro, Veja, The Traveller, Sunday Times Korea, Rolling Stone.
In 2009, UNESCO ambassador Edith Tamagnini invited her to shoot for the commemorative book Perpetual Liberty, San Marino World Heritage (Unesco, Minerva editions), and she spent a year telling the story through 224 pages of photographs immortalizing a magical city with close-up aerial shots, never shot before, catching thru her lenses unusual images of the everyday life of a magical city with a new light. The book also tells of the most intimate moments of the dressing of the regent captains with unpublished shots never documented before.
The renowned Nikon Italy brand often involves her in important occasions such as the publication of It's a Nikon, It's an Icon, the book commemorating Nikon's 100th anniversary in 2017, where the photographer is among the 100 selected artists and her tribute to Andy Warhol, Banana Golden Pop Art, is included. In 2021, the same brand commissioned her to write an essay on colour in composition for the Nikon Master of Photography series edited by Cairo publisher Corriere della Sera. Once again, her golden tribute (the aforementioned Banana) to the father of pop art is on the cover.
Her works are part of public and private collections. In 2019, the Stefano Boschi Museum, one of the most important twentieth-century art museums, commissioned her for Ode to Silence, a reinterpretation of "The School of Gladiators" by Giorgio de Chirico included in the project 'Substitutions' and now part of the contemporary art collection. Andrea Dusio art critic and curator of the artist's solo exhibition, Sacred and Profane, wrote: "She is an all-round visual artist, and the construction of the set is a sort of reconnaissance into the soul of the story she is about to tell. She uses the language of pop and advertising images as a reassuring chromatic/formal device that satisfies the distracted eye for which her work can be assimilated to David LaChapelle's exuberance, but she does so to open a kind of window onto the contemplation of what is really contained in one of her shots, and which is mostly invisible to the eye. Monica's language is, in fact, an extremely personal form of magical realism."
The art critic and historian Vincenzo Trione, already curator of the Italian Pavilion of the 2015 Venice Art Biennale, thus describes her photographic stagings inspired by Caravaggio for the Lux Et Filum project: «For Monica, the past in the proper meaning does not exist |…|Monica Silva implements time jumps |…| Think of each shot as a theatre in which memory is reconfigured with ease. |…| She is not afraid to make the sources she referred to unrecognizable through a style that does not fear excesses and exuberances. Here is the strength of the hyper-baroque reinterpretations of the history of art carried out through the photographic medium, by Monica Silva».

PUBLICATIONS

Numerous publications with her signature, including: 
"Nikon Master of Photography" Corriere Della Sera (Cairo Ed.)
"No News, Good News" G. Colin (Rizzoli)
"It's a Nikon, It's an Icon" 100 years of Nikon in the eyes of 100 photographers
"Facce da MAC "(Apple) Alberto Pucci (Mondadori)
"Art Book” (Libreria Bocca 1775)
"Shooting Yourself "Haje Jan Kamps (Contrast ed.)
"Fotostorie" La Lettura (Corriere della Sera Foundation)
"Mythographies" G. Colin, San Marino  Unesco 
"Libertà Perpetua" (Minerva ed.)
"Il Panino dal Mare" Alessandro Frassica (Giunti Ed.)
"Le Voci dei Libri" Ezio Raimondi Cover picture (Il Mulino ed)
"Maionese di fragole" Moreno cedroni Cover Picture (Mondadori ed)

GROUP & SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 

2006: “Percorsi Illuminati” Mondadori Multicenter (Bologna)
2007: “People I Met”, Palazzo Mancini, (Town Hall, Cattolica) - “Body & Soul on Hi Key” Mondadori Multicenter (Milano)
2008: “Life Above All”, Mazzoleni Art Gallery (Milan/Lugano) 
2009: “The women of Spoon River”,  Abbazia di Pomposa, Stefano Forni art Gallery, Codigoro Town Hall,  (Bologna, Codigoro) - “GEMLUC” group show, Mazzoleni Art (Montecarlo) - “Home, World” Foiano Photography Festival, (Foiano) 
2010:“On My Skin”, Stefano Forni Art Gallery Arte Fiera Off, (Bologna) 
2013: “My Hidden Ego”, Palazzo Pichi Sforza (Sansepolcro) - “The Butterfly’s Fall – Postcards from Tokyo”, Nuova Galleria Morone, (Milan) - “Beautiful China”, Nikon group show, Milan Town Hall and China Tourism Board, (Milan) - “See me Gallery”, Group show, (New York) 
2014: “Lux Et Filum A Contemporary Vision of Caravaggio”, Reda1865 World Launch Event Casa Petra (Sao Paulo)
2015: “Lux Et Filum A Contemporary Vision of Caravaggio”, Instituto di Cultura Italia (Sao Paulo) - “Banana Golden Pop Art”, MIA Photography Fair 2015, Still Gallery (Milan) - “Banana Golden Pop Art”, Affordable Art Fair, Gaudì Gallery (Hamburg) 
2016: “Lux Et Filum A Contemporary Vision of Caravaggio”, MIA Photography Fair, Bianconi Gallery (Milan) 
2017: “Banana Golden Pop Art”, Milan Design Week, Brazil S/A (Università Statale Milan) 
2018: “Red Series/Fil Rouge” (Art in a Box group show) Galleria Schubert/Studio Bolzani (Milan) - “Female Photography” collective exhibition at Spazio Tadini Museum (Milan) 
2019: "Photo Rocks" Milano Photo Week - Le Park (Milano)
2019: "Sacro and Profano"  (solo exhibition) Fondazione Maimeri at M.A.C (Milan) - Stefano Boschi Museum in the contemporary art collection with the picture "Invocation to the silence" a personal view of Giorgio De Chirico 'School of the Gladiators. 
2022 "RGB - Angel's Gabriel White Light" Amart Internationa antique art fair - Longari Arte Milano Best Site-specific installation Museo della permanente Milano
2022/2023 "Art beyond Imagination" Longari Arte Milano Exhibition and site-specific art installation

Her works are collected by private owners, museums and public institutions in Italy and abroad.

TALKS AND CONFERENCES

TEDx Rovigo Keynote Speaker 2017
Lucca Photography Festival - Psychology in Portraiture (Lucca) 2010
Università Popolare di Camponoogara - Secrets of Portraiture (Venice) 2016
Università Popolare di Camponogara - Portraiture in the times of selfie (Venice) 2018
Foiano Photography Festival - Were you born creative or did you learn it? 2010
Corriere della Sera UNIVERSIDAY  - How Photography Changes the World  (IULM Milan) 2015
IULM - Portraiture in the History of Man (Milan) 2016
IED/TAU VISUAL - Creative Portraiture in the Era of Selfie (Milan) 2018
CIRCOLO FOTOGRAFICO MILANESE "Portraiture" (Milan) 2019

CORPORATE WORKSHOP MASTER: 

Manfrotto School of Xcellence - Psychology Portraiture - 6 editions (Milan - Bassano del Grappa)
Nikon School - Psychology Portraiture - 10 editions (Bologna - Rome - Milan - Oslo - Egadi Islands - Rimini)
Leika / NOC - Let There Be Light - 1 edition (Milan)
Hasselblad - My Hidden Ego - 6 editions (Tokyo - Milan - Porto - Lisbon - Monopoli)
Ypsilon - My Hidden Ego - 2 editions (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Treoci - My Hidden Ego - 2 editions (Venice)
IULM - Lighting in Portraiture - 1 edition (Milan)
Paoletti School of Photography - Light in Nude Photography - 1 edition (Bologna)

AWARDS: 

Honourable Mention for “Lux Et Filum A Contemporary Vision of Caravaggio” in 2014, IPA Awards
Biennale International of Art 2011, Venice, Italy Best Picture “Dorfles infinito e lo sguardo a Ghirri” 
“Best Brazilian Photographer in Italy 2018”
 by Focus Brasil Foundation, Globo Group, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Brazil 

SKILLS: 

Psychology Portraiture - Expert in Great Masters' Art History - Public Speaking - Writing - Black Belt of Photography Lighting - Video Direction

Technologies: Mac - Adobe Photoshop - Adobe Lightroom - Keynote

Spoken languages: Portuguese (mother tongue), English (proficiency), Italian (advanced), Spanish (intermediate), French (intermediate)


Monica Silva lives and works in Milan, Italy
MONICA SILVA IS AMBASSADOR FOR MANFROTTO, NIKON ITALIA