Armando Rotoletti (Messina, 1958) began working as a photojournalist in the 1980s in London. After moving to Milan, in 1990 at the invitation of Grazia Neri he joined her agency, becoming a leading portrait photographer of prominent figures in the world of culture, science, show business, and the economy. His reportages have appeared in major national and international newspapers and magazines and in solo and group exhibitions.
In the last 20 years or so he has been pursuing several larger projects of social commentary – Casa della Carità. Faces and Stories (2005) features the shelter run by Father Colmegna, The Barbers of Sicily (2007) is a journey through the last few traditional barber shops on the island – and landscapes and facescapes of notorious food and agricultural areas: People of Barbaresco (2013) was the first product of this commitment. Talking Circles of Biancavilla (2013) offers anthropological insight on a town on Mt Etna. Valelapena (2013) collects tales of redemption in the prison of Alba. Scicli, City of Joy (2014) presents the charming Baroque town.
Etna: Wine and People (2015) chronicles the wine renaissance from that area, and The face of the soul (2015) portrays 50 Italian philosophers. Noto. Stones and Faces (2015) features the town’s uniqueness and beauty. Striking Piazzas of Sicily (2017), a love letter to the island from one of its sons, shows eighty-two empty piazzas, free of any visual conditioning for the duration of a shot. Selinunte (2019) highlights the aesthetic relationship between ruins and buildings, temples, and landscapes. In 2020 he published a bravely ambitious project: Death in Sicily, a portrait of the island’s tradition of mourning, with contributions from Dacia Maraini and Ignazio Buttitta. Unveiled Ventimiglia (2021) is the heartfelt testimony of the encounter with the western Ligurian Riviera.
Analisti allo specchio (2023), presents thirty portraits of leading Italian psychoanalysts, each one accompanied by a brief text on the subject of the self and the mirror. In the introduction to Marina di Pisa (2024), Salvatore Settis writes: “Chronicler or singer of one of the thousand realities of an Italy that is never really ‘minor’, Armando Rotoletti has captured in these photos the spirit of a place (Marina) and the long shadow of another one (Pisa).”
In his latest book SICILIA (2025), Tomaso Montanari observes “Loving Sicily means loving its difference, its uniqueness: and here the broad notion of cultural, material and immaterial heritage becomes nearby, urgent, political. Rotoletti, as is the case with artists, has sensitive instruments and unique points of view: the result is a sentimental education to see, which we need today more than ever.”