FEMINAL project: The Seal Photograph - Limited Edition of 1

Mario Guarino moves to London in 2000 at the age of 22 from Italy to study advertising and mass communication at London College. After meeting art photographer Patrick Gorman he starts a course in photography at the Kensington & Chelsea College where subsequently he becomes Patrick's first assistant on a series of high profile assignments. Follows a period of apprenticeship and having assisted a range of international fashion photographers he makes the leap into becoming a free lance photographer with a first publication for The Face magazine. In the following years Mario works on editorial shoots and advertising campaigns for new and established fashion designers gaining the opportunity of travelling extensively and collaborating with a range of international clients in London, Moscow, Milan, Paris,Berlin and Copenhagen. In 2008 his first solo show is inaugurated in Shoreditch, East London at the Maverick Gallery with "Feminal" a controversial personal project on studies of the female body, Identity and Personality which attracted attention well beyond his entourage and a documentary for Sky Italy was shot during the preparation of the event. After that experience, while still shooting fashion, Mario becomes more and more focused on his personal portrait production which leads in 2009 to a collaboration with Bronx Productions to shoot a portraits project of real life Mafia Gangsters turned into actors with the Oscar and Golden Globe nominated movie Gomorrah. The work is based on a series of still photographs and recordings of on set conversations between Mario and the Actors which form a mixed media installation that will be shown in Italy later this year. Mario currently lives and works in London.