Dondero Mario Biography
Mario Dondero (Milan, 6 May 1928 – Petritoli, 13 December 2015) was an Italian photographer and photojournalist. Of Genoese origins, he is one of the most original figures of contemporary photojournalism. As a very young partisan in the Ossola Valley, he approached journalism very early, first written and then photographic, starting to collaborate in the early fifties on "L'Avanti", "l'Unità", "Milano Sera", "Le Ore" . Linked to the so-called "Jamaicans" group (the frequenters of the Bar Jamaica in Milan, of which he is president: Alfa Castaldi, Camilla Cederna, Luciano Bianciardi, Giulia Niccolai, Carlo Bavagnoli, Ugo Mulas, Uliano Lucas), in 1955 he moved to Paris where he collaborates with "L'Espresso", "L'Illustrazione Italiana", "Le Monde", "Le Nouvel Observateur", "Daily Herald". He frequents and portrays French writers and intellectuals (Roland Topor, Claude Mauriac, Daniel Pennac, Yashar Kemal). Among his most famous photos, the one of the group of Nouveau roman writers taken in Paris in October 1959 in front of the headquarters of the Éditions de Minuit (Nathalie Sarraute, Samuel Beckett, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Mauriac, Claude Simon, Jérôme Lindon, Robert Pinget, Claude Ollier). His interest in Africa manifested itself through his collaboration with the magazines Jeune Afrique, Afrique-Asie, Demain l'Afrique, in the mid-1950s to Regards (the legendary communist magazine that published among the first the photographs of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro on the Spanish war). He then worked from Paris for Il Giorno during the Algerian War. In Italy he collaborated for a long time with Vie Nuovi, Tempo illustrato, L'Europeo, L'Espresso, Epoca both at the time when the magazine was directed by Enzo Biagi and in the more recent one when it was directed by Carlo Rognoni. Since their birth he began publishing il manifesto in the daily newspaper and in the weekly Diario di Enrico Deaglio. In the 1960s he made some "photo stories" for children's TV and some shorts for the Cinema Antenna of PCI Unitelefilm. Passionate about radio, he has collaborated with the Italian section of the BBC and recently hosted some broadcasts for Radio3 (Rai) dedicated to the history of photojournalism with Emanuele Giordana (2012-2013). He has exhibited his photographs on many occasions and in many Italian and foreign cities. Known for his civil and social commitment, he documented the work of the Emergency medical teams in Afghanistan, of which he is an active supporter. In the last years of his life he lived in Fermo.
