Franco’s Aunt is a series that Giacomelli composed in 1981 by reworking some 1950s hospice photographs depicting an elderly woman, the aunt of Giacomelli’s old friend, Lanfranco Torcoletti, at whose photography workshop Giaomelli printed his first photographs (1953-54), just along from his own typography. At the hospice, Giacomelli immersed himself in the ideas that were troubling him: death, loneliness, the meaning of life, the brink of its disintegration, distance, love, loss, and corporeality.
By photographing at the hospice, Giacomelli maintained a strong link to his mother, Libera, who worked there as a laundress after the premature death of her husband. Giacomelli had been familiar with the hospice since the early 1930s, when he accompanied his mother and sat to eat his soup while she worked.
In the course of his life, Giacomelli composed several series on the theme of old age, photographing elderly women in hospices in Senigallia (1954/59) and Urbino (1981), resulting in several narrative cycles: Ospizio (1954/56), Vita d’ospizio (1956/57), Perché (1959), Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (1966/68), Non fatemi domande (1981/83), Sala d’attesa (1981/83), Ninna nanna (1985/87), La zia di Franco (1993/94), E io ti vidi fanciulla (1993/94).
The hospice photographs are like one long series, extrapolated from time, which Giacomelli returns to over the decades (to revive their subjects), as if to avert death.
