The exhibition

The Studio 

Aldo Ballo together with Marirosa Toscani opened in 1956 the Studio Ballo+Ballo, which was to become the most renowned photographic studio specialising in design, where organisation, professionalism and expertise reached the highest levels. A professional studio, a training centre for many young assistants, but also a unique environment, a new way of understanding relationships, collaborations, cultural exchanges. A lifestyle and way of thinking.

A meeting place

Studio Ballo became a meeting place for artists, architects, and designers such as Bruno Munari, Gae Aulenti, Cini Boeri, Ettore Sottsass, Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni, Enzo Mari, Alessandro Mendini, to name but a few. The Ballo collaborated with them and with major design companies, including Olivetti, Cassina, Danese, Zanotta, Brionvega, Alessi, Arflex, Bassetti, Barilla, Kartell, Artemide, Tecno, Driade, Borsalino, B&B Italia, Venini, and La Rinascente. Aldo and Marirosa’s images were also featured in major magazines in the field of design and furniture, such as Domus, Ottagono, Abitare, and especially Casa Vogue, edited by Isa Tutino Vercelloni, who collaborated with the Ballo duo from 1968 to 1992. Studio Ballo was actively involved in the cultural dynamics and innovations of the ever-evolving Italian design, confirming its status as an international leader, and celebrating it at the great exhibition held at MoMA, New York, in 1972, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape (curated by Emilio Ambasz), whose catalogue images were entrusted to Aldo Ballo.

Exhibition itinerary

The exhibition includes over one hundred photographs by Studio Ballo+Ballo, some designer items, on loan from the ADI Design Museum and the Castello Sforzesco’s Collections of Applied Art, and some original pieces that belonged to the two photographers, as well as period magazines with which the Ballo collaborated, and volumes featuring their images. Thanks to Studio Azzurro’s video installations, which interact with the photos and items on show in the Sala Viscontea, memories and everything that could not be archived – the photographic processes, the relationship with the designer items on display, the creation of setups – become accessible and tangible, allowing visitors to live a unique experience, exploring the “workshop” of Studio Ballo but also perceiving the atmosphere of a bygone era, that of analogue photography.

Sala Viscontea

How was it possible to convey the spirit of the Studio, what is not material and therefore remains only in the memory? Studio Azzurro, whose origins are closely linked to Studio Ballo, addressed the issue, attempting to recreate a shared experience of what is destined to remain only in memory.
In the Sala Viscontea, Studio Azzurro’s installations interact with the original pieces on display (photographs, magazines, books) to shed light on the Ballo’s relationship with publishing in the field of architecture and design and to illustrate the various facets of the photographic “process”: from the proof to the positive image and the magazine page. Combined with the photos on the walls, they also highlight the evolution of Ballo’s style of photography, focused on Italian design from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Sala dei Pilastri

Large portraits of major designers, interacting with photographs of their projects, are displayed in the Sala dei Pilastri, along with a tribute to some works by Marirosa.
The great story of Studio Ballo is complemented by video portraits created over the years by Studio Azzurro, in which key figures in Italian design and art pass the baton to each other in a six-screen synchronised montage, creating a collective narrative that fully conveys what the Ballo Studio represented, leaving its mark not only on design but on culture as well.

Cini Boeri Portrait

The donation and the Call for Proposals Strategia Fotografia

The idea for an exhibition was conceived in 2022, when Marirosa Toscani Ballo donated the archival materials of Studio Ballo+Ballo, the result of a lifetime’s work with her husband Aldo Ballo, to the Civic Photographic Archive of Milan.

In 2023, the Archive participated in Strategia Fotografia, a Call for Proposals promoted by the MIC, with a project to enhance the Archive, which won, thus leading to the development of the exhibition project and its catalogue.