Mirella Ricciardi (née Rocco) is a celebrated photographer best known for her evocative high contrast black and white images that capture her subject’s essence and spirit.

Born 14th July 1931 and raised in Kenya, near Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, Mirella Ricciardi initially began experimenting with a camera at a young age after her mother suggested photography would be an interesting ‘hobby’, contrary to the beliefs of that time that a woman’s place was in her home. Mirella quickly fell in love with the photography medium and later began developing her style in the Paris studios of the early fifties under the tutelage of Vogue fashion photographer, Harry Meerson. Later in Rome, a chance meeting with the film director Michelangelo Antonioni prompted a brief career change to an actress where she appeared in Antonioni’s film L’Eclisse (1962). This gave her the opportunity to interact with the masters of the visual story-telling world, both cinematographers and actors working in Rome at the time. From them she learnt the art of camera angles and the use of lenses and techniques, which together with her Parisian experience, formed her signature style. Mirella preferred to be behind the lens rather than in-front of it, so she could remain anonymous in order to hone her photographic passion. This led to a series of telling portraits of actors, namely Monica Vitti, Gina Lollobrigida and Alain Delon, to name a few.

Driven by her love of photography and a desire to keep exploring, Mirella Ricciardi set out on her nomadic wanderings around the world in search of images with contextually interesting stories.

Over a sixty year period, she has captured an array of different cultures around the world through her photographs. Starting out in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, she photographed the customs and ceremonies of important tribes in East Africa, culminating in her seminal book, Vanishing Africa (1971). Her photographs have been described as “having the integrity of spontaneous, intuitive documents made with the deep love of someone who knew and understood their subject” (Phillipe Garner, former head of International Photography at Christies auction house).

Subsequent adventures and assignments resulted in further photographic studies of the inhabitants of the various regions she visited. For instance, in the 1970s, she travelled from the Middle East to the East coast of Africa, on board an Arabian dhow, following the monsoon trade route which sailors have travelled for thousands of years. Inadvertently, this adventure set the precedence for a new direction in her photographic journey, as it allowed her to accurately portray the peoples, events and places she visited.

In the 1980s, Mirella Ricciardi was sent on assignments to cover war and famine zones in Africa for various publications. Her ability to convey the atmosphere of the event and therefore preserve a moment forever spurred her on to continue using this medium as a form of story telling in her reportage assignments. Her quest to bring visibility to issues facing humanity led her to embark on her next adventure with her husband Lorenzo Ricciardi and their team. On this 21-month equatorial expedition across Africa, Mirella documented their journey travelling from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic on the rivers and lakes of Central Africa, in 1985

In 1990, Mirella Ricciardi was commissioned by Orion publishers to produce a book about the native people of the Amazon Rainforest as seen here in this exhibition. This caught the attention of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) who invited her to partake in a 70 minute video diary programme about her experience in the forest and among its people.

All these adventures have culminated in the publications of four books; The Voyage of the Mir-el-Lah (1980), African Rainbow (1989), Vanishing Amazon (1991) and African Visions (2000).

There is a defining factor that links Mirella Ricciardi’s images, regardless of geography and subject matter. She attributes this to her instinctive reaction to capturing an image. “My rapid reactive decisions are very definite and rarely falter...speed is the defining factor which does not allow for hesitancy... my immediate decisions depend very much on the subject matter and lighting conditions in front of my lens, it is this instinctive reaction that I never question that defines my style.”

In the later part of her life, Mirella Ricciardi has turned to hand colour and experimented with past works to form mixed media prints. In doing so, she has taken the time to digest her life's work and understand the significance and impact of her photographs. This potential has been a collaborative effort with her daughter, Amina Ricciardi-Dempsey, custodian of her mother’s archive, ‘Vanishing Africa Ltd’. In 2007, Amina first discovered her mother’s work stored away and forgotten in their childhood home in Kenya. Upon retrieving the work and returning it to the UK, Amina realised she had fallen upon an extraordinary photographic treasure of historical and cultural significance.

Together, mother and daughter have dedicated the past 15 years to preserving the photographer’s legacy, cataloguing her extensive library of negatives and transparencies. This project has attracted art collectors and fans, which has brought the work back into the public domain.