Massimo Vitali (b. 1944, Como, Italy) is one of the most distinctive photographers working in the tradition of large-scale colour photography. For thirty years he has climbed a three-metre aluminium scaffolding platform, levelled an enormous large-format camera at the horizon, and waited. The images that result — crowded Italian beaches, ski slopes, nightclubs, resorts, theme parks, pilgrimage sites — are panoramic documents of contemporary leisure: hundreds of people going about their ordinary business, unposed, unaware, legible as individuals within a collective whole.
He studied photography at the London College of Printing (1964) and worked first as a photojournalist across Europe, then as a cinematographer for Italian television and advertising in the 1980s. It was his film background — the speed of positioning a camera, the habit of watching crowds rather than directing them — that shaped the working method he developed when he returned to still photography in his fifties. He began the beach series in 1995; by his own count he had made roughly 5,000 exposures in total, typically one or two per day, numbered chronologically. He lives and works in Lucca, Italy.
His work is associated with the influence of the Düsseldorf School — particularly Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth — in its use of large format, elevated viewpoint, and analytical distance. But where Gursky tends toward abstraction, Vitali keeps the individual figure legible. The result is closer to the layered crowd scenes of Flemish and Italian Renaissance painting than to contemporary conceptual photography: images in which dozens of private dramas unfold simultaneously without any of them becoming the subject.
"The photographers I like the least are those who sensationalise the scene."
Camera Gear Used by Massimo Vitali
Vitali works with both large-format film and digital systems, choosing between them based on the project. His confirmed equipment, named in his own words, reflects a commitment to the highest possible resolution — the tool that makes his two-by-four metre prints viable.
Large-Format Film Cameras
8×10 Phillips — his primary film camera. Named by Vitali in a Lux magazine interview as the camera he has worked with for his beach and landscape series. The Phillips 8×10 is a lightweight field camera made by Richard Phillips, a small American maker who has since ceased production — a camera prized for its portability relative to its format. At 8×10 inches, the negative captures a contact-print-scale image with a tonal range and resolution that no smaller format can approach. For prints at two metres or wider, the 8×10 negative is not a luxury; it is a practical requirement.
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| Phillips 8x10 large format |
11×14 Deardorff — his second film camera. Also named by Vitali in the same interview as "a classic American camera" from the 1950s. The 11×14 Deardorff is an even larger format: a full-plate view camera that produces negatives roughly 28×35cm. It is the kind of camera that requires a full day to set up, expose, and pack away — but at the scales Vitali prints, the additional resolution and tonal depth are visible.
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| Deardorff 11 x 14 |
11x14 Gibellini - on his website he mentions that camera as one he also used, as per the illustration below.
Digital System
Massimo Vitali swithed to digital in 2010.
ALPA 12 XY body with Phase One IQ4 150 MP digital back. Confirmed by both ALPA's own Grand Masters profile of Vitali and the Lux interview, which specifies an Alpa body with "a Phase One back of 80 million pixels." The ALPA 12 XY is a Swiss-made technical camera — a precision instrument designed for architectural and fine art use, capable of shift and tilt movements, and paired with high-resolution medium format digital backs. With an 80-megapixel Phase One back it produces files sufficient for the same two-by-four metre prints his film cameras deliver. ALPA has named Vitali one of its Grand Masters — a designation given to photographers whose practice is built around the system.
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| Massimo Vitali and Alpa camera |
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| PhaseOne IQ4 150 MP |
Lenses
Standard focal length, no wide angles. Vitali has stated his lens preference directly: he uses lenses equivalent to "a bit more than a 50mm on a smaller camera" and "I don't like to use wide angles." On large format, this means normal-to-slightly-long lenses — focal lengths that render perspective naturally rather than exaggerating it. For crowd scenes shot from a fixed elevated position, a standard field of view keeps the image honest: figures at the edges of the frame are not distorted, and the spatial relationships between people read as they would to the eye.
Platform and Tripod
Three-metre aluminium scaffolding platform. Vitali has described his platform in his own words as "a kind of very rudimentary tripod with some recycled aluminium tubes" — roughly three metres high, chosen to give a slightly elevated viewpoint that keeps both the foreground crowd and the background horizon in the same plane of focus. When he works abroad he rents equivalent scaffolding locally. The platform is as much his signature as the camera: it is visible in location photographs and has been remarked on by beachgoers, one of whom was reportedly overheard saying, "Look at that idiot, he thinks he's Massimo Vitali!" — not knowing they were looking at the man himself.
Printing
Lightjet prints, Diasec mounted. Vitali's large prints are made on a Lightjet — a laser-exposure chromogenic printer that exposes photographic paper directly, producing continuous-tone colour prints at a quality that inkjet processes do not replicate. The prints are then mounted using the Diasec process: face-mounted under acrylic, which protects the surface, eliminates glare, and gives the image a depth and luminosity suited to the scale at which he works. His prints are made in Milan and framed in Düsseldorf.
Technique and Style
Vitali's method is built around stillness, patience, and the refusal to direct. He chooses a location, positions the platform, levels the camera at the horizon, and waits. The camera stays fixed; the scene assembles itself. "The camera stays still, I look at what's going on around me and I shoot." He prefers scenes with thirty to a hundred people — enough to create visual density and multiple simultaneous narratives without becoming a crowd so large that the individual disappears. "Bread for your brain," he has called it: images that offer enough material that the viewer can invent their own stories within the frame.
His subject is leisure — specifically the kind of ordinary, unremarkable leisure that is easy to overlook. Beaches, ski slopes, nightclubs, theme parks, religious sites: places where large groups of people gather and reveal, without intending to, the patterns of their social world. He has called it "the normality of our lives," and the phrase is precise. He is not interested in the exceptional or dramatic moment; he actively dislikes photographers who sensationalise. "To me, every moment is the decisive moment" — a deliberate inversion of Cartier-Bresson's formula, insisting that the decisive moment is not a rare event but the continuous condition of any scene worth watching.
The elevated viewpoint is essential to this. At three metres above the ground, he can keep the entire beach — foreground and background, water and sand — in a single plane that holds both the intimate detail and the panoramic scope. Shot from eye level, the same scene would compress into a confusing jumble of overlapping figures; shot from above, it would become aerial, abstract. The slight elevation preserves human scale while extending the depth of field to include everything. It is a compositional solution that he has not deviated from in thirty years.
His connection to painting is not incidental. He has described his work as influenced by the layered crowd scenes of Flemish and Italian Renaissance masters — images in which every figure is distinct, every gesture legible, and no single narrative dominates. The result is a kind of contemporary history painting: not of battles or coronations, but of people on a Sunday afternoon in August, doing nothing in particular.
How to Shoot Like Massimo Vitali
Elevate the camera, even slightly. His three-metre platform is not about looking down on people; it is about finding the angle at which the full depth of a scene becomes legible. Even standing on a low wall or the step of a vehicle changes the relationship between foreground and background. Try the same crowded scene from ground level and from two metres up and compare what happens to the spatial depth.
Wait for the scene to assemble itself. He positions his camera and then watches. The image he wants is not a reaction to a single moment but a reading of the whole scene over time — a moment when multiple figures are in useful positions simultaneously. This requires patience measured in minutes, not seconds. Set up in a fixed position and do not move until you have made ten exposures from that exact spot.
Use a standard focal length for crowd scenes. His deliberate refusal of wide angles is a compositional principle: wider lenses distort the relationship between near and far figures, making the foreground loom and the background shrink. A standard or slightly longer lens keeps everyone in the frame at their natural scale. If you habitually shoot crowds wide, try 50mm for a session and notice how the spatial relationships between people change.
Embrace the ordinary. His strongest images are of unremarkable scenes — a Tuesday afternoon on a mid-range Italian beach, not a spectacular sunset at a famous location. The subject is the ordinary behaviour of ordinary people, and that subject is available everywhere. The mistake is to look for the exceptional when what rewards attention is the normally overlooked.
Books by Massimo Vitali
Landscape with Figures (Steidl, 2004) — His first major monograph, collecting the beach and leisure series from the late 1990s and early 2000s. The book that established his international reputation.
Natural Habitats (Steidl, 2010) — A second major volume extending the series to new sites: ski slopes, nightclubs, religious gatherings, theme parks. The companion to the revised Landscape with Figures.
Landscapes with Figures & Natural Habitats (Steidl, 2011) — A slipcased two-volume edition combining both major bodies of work. The definitive edition of his beach and leisure photography.
La Rambla (Actar, 2010) — A focused study of Barcelona's famous pedestrian boulevard, shot from his characteristic elevated position over several years.
Benicassim: El Festival (Actar/MUSAC, 2008) — A document of the Spanish music festival, applying his beach-crowd methodology to the nightclub and outdoor concert setting.
Where to See Massimo Vitali's Work
- Mazzoleni Art: mazzoleniart.com — London and Turin gallery representing Vitali with exhibition archive and available works.
- Galeria Senda: galeriasenda.com — Barcelona gallery representation.
- Ben Rubin Gallery: benrubigallery.com — New York representation.
- ALPA Grand Masters: alpa.swiss — Profile and portfolio on the ALPA Grand Masters page.
- Steidl: steidl.de — All major Vitali books in print and available directly.
Conclusion
Massimo Vitali shoots with an 8×10 Phillips and an 11×14 Deardorff for film work, and an ALPA 12 XY with an 80-megapixel Phase One back for digital — systems that share a common logic: maximum resolution for prints that reach two metres wide. His lenses are standard focal length by choice; he does not use wide angles. His platform is three metres of aluminium scaffolding that he has carried to beaches, ski slopes, nightclubs, and pilgrimage sites across Europe for thirty years. The prints are Lightjet, Diasec-mounted, made in Milan and framed in Düsseldorf.
The technique is inseparable from the work. The scale of the camera demands a fixed position and a long wait; the elevated viewpoint demands a subject deep enough to fill the frame; the standard lens demands a crowd large enough to give the image density without compressing it. Everything points toward the beach in August, the ski slope in February, the festival at midnight: places where enough people gather to make the image possible, and where nobody is doing anything remarkable enough to distract from the picture as a whole. "It's the normality of our lives."
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