Dario Garofalo always dreamed of storytelling, whether writing novels or capturing moments through the curated click of photography. With a passion for journalism, Dario began taking casual snapshots of his friends, immortalizing their daily life with resounding gravitas. In the early 2000's, as photography made an incredible leap forward from analogue to digital, Dario changed pace and investigated his hometown Prato, a small textile town outside of Florence. “For me, it was impossible to walk without noticing the textiles and becoming fascinating by their designs and forms.” Starting out in a tiny Tuscan town, Dario’s photographic adventures have taken him all over Italy, opening doors to forgotten workshops, historic vineyards, and monumental castles. His photographs have been featured in the New York Times and Architectural Digest, but it was The Place Firenze’s general manager Claudio Meli who brought him to the center of Florence placing large-scale prints of Dario’s photographs in the ground floor lounge and salon of The Place Firenze, which act as virtual gateways to otherwise inaccessible and unseen worlds.
Artisans' ateliers are beautiful places, secret places, which preserve ancient knowledge. Every object that seems abandoned there by chance is actually useful.
Evocative and deeply chromatic, Dario’s photos are visual narratives that bring the viewer inside the atelier giving them intimate views of the daily lives of Italy’s artisans. He goes behind the scenes to capture the made-to-measure traditions of Italian haute couture, the colorful combinations of textile manufacturing, and the mystic moments of ceramic artists and master glass blowers. In 2015, his adventures exploring ateliers became "Italia su Misura,” a photography book of introspective looks inside the workshops and lives of Tuscan artisans.
Just as he is always looking for the next image to capture, Dario is constantly thinking about his next project. His photographic endeavors have evolved into beautiful, collaborative books and publica-tions focusing on Italy’s top artists, designers, and companies, including historic porcelain design house Richard Ginori, celebrating the traditions of socializing. Captivated by the art of book publish-ing, he is also producing his own series of artist edition photo books, with the hopes that they will be collector’s books. In addition, Dario is self-publishing a limited-edition book, that in his own words, is “slightly more particular” than the traditional coffee table art book. Created as a work of art in its own right, the edition of 100 is printed in large format and each book is unique with its own selec-tion of Garofalo’s photos.