Campogalliano, Modena dicembre 2005

Bio
Franco Vaccari was born in Modena in 1936. He had a scientific education and graduated in physics.
His debut as an artist was as a poet of the visual. A clear glimpse of his subsequent development lies in the title of his 1966 book "Le tracce" (Traces) and its use of photography to present graffiti as anonymous poetry, poèmes trouvés. The leitmotivs of spoor and photograph run throughout his work. From the outset Vaccari's use of photography aimed not to produce visual mimesis or analogy, but a kind of footprint of where someone has passed, a signal, a symptom, a physical trace of being-there. Its meaning lies in the often dim existential link between spoor and cause thereof.
This was eloquently expressed in his contribution to the 1972 Venice Biennale. Here is what Renato Barilli says of it in the book to mark the event: "Let us recall the scene at the start: Vaccari's "room" in the central pavilion of the Venice Giardini. It was stark and bare to the verge of disappointment, the merest photo booth in the impersonal whiteness of its walls.
One solitary slogan in many languages (LEAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC TRACE THAT YOU PASSED THIS WAY) hinted at some director's intention, hovering in mid-air, as it were. The difference from the usual rooms showing exhibits was glaring: here only the tools of the trade were provided; the artist had decamped and left the public to get on with it."
That was the fourth of what Vaccari called Exhibitions in real time. To date he has put on 32.
His artistic output borders on many fields, though perhaps the definition that comes closest is "conceptual realism". He is credited with paternity of the concept "exhibition in real time", which he has explored theoretically and in practice.
Vaccari has always followed up his art-work with thoughts of a theoretical kind. Among his publications are "Duchamp e l'occultamento del lavoro" (1978) (Duchamp and work obscured) and "Fotografia e inconscio tecnologico" (1979) (Photography and the technological unconscious). This last was rated "the most important Italian contribution to the current debate on photography" (A: Colombo, Panorama, 24th October 1983). In 1980 it was published in France as well, where it met with enormous success.
Vaccari has run courses at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasburg and, since 2004, at the Architecture Faculty of Milan's Polytechnic.
In 1972, 1980 and 1993 he took part in the Venice Biennale with rooms of his own.
In 1984 he had an anthological show at the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna.
In 1999 he participated in the Minimalia" show at the New York PSI.
In 2003 he and his videos were invited to the Locarno Festival of the Cinema.