Marco Garofalo started to work in the field of photography almost 20 years ago as a traditional printer then as an assistant for fashion and advert photographers. He then started working as photoreporter on social and cultural issues for more than 15 years, mainly between Milan and the African continent, pursuing architecture and personal research creating links between photography and literature.
After being a Grazia Neri agency staff photographer for 5 years Marco Garofalo is now a freelance.
His work has been published and exposed on the main Italian and international magazines and galleries with pieces of works such as ‘La città che sale’ (‘the city raises’), a 10 years long term project about the transformation of Milan waiting for the 2015 EXPO, ‘Kinois, guys from Kinshasa’, ‘Chinese dream’ about Beijing and Shanghai urban transformation, ‘Underground DOC’ about the Italian young underground suburbs rappers.
The work as a set-photographer for the documentary-film ‘On the bride’s side’, an unaxpected cinema success in 2014 that tells the story of 5 syrian refugees on the way to Stockholm, has been published in magazines from all over the world and is now available as an exposition called ‘The sky belongs to everyone’.
Marco Garofalo is curator of photographic exhibitions for the magazine ‘Africa’ such as: ‘Africa football’-2010, ‘Good morning Africa’-2012, ‘One day in Africa’-2014 and ‘Flying Africa’-2015. http://www.africarivista.it/mostre/
He teaches photography in Italy and abroad, and is President of APFOPOPO (Apritoio di Fotografia Potenziale Potenziata) – Collage de ‘Pataphysique, Italy.
‘Energy Portraits’ is a photographic exhibition resulting from 3 years of travels in three continents on the theme of energy access in that part of the world where 1 billion people still live without access to electricity, exhibited at the ‘Energy Festival’ 2018 Triennale di Milano, ‘Festival of human rights’ 2018, ‘Festival Fà la cosa causa 2018’, and scheduled for 2020 at the most important global event linked to the theme of sustainable energy SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FOR ALL, Kigali Rwanda. Many of these photographs were used by the United Nations Foundations in 2018 as part of the #eyeonclimate initiative, on the theme of climate change and climate action.
With some of these photographs he won two important international photo competitions: InnoEnergy, Copenhagen 2018 and Gruppo Italia-Energia: 2018 and shortlisted at the Sony World Photo Award 2020. He conceived and curated the Energy SELF Portraits competition, currently in progress, in collaboration with the Aem Foundation and the support of the United Nations Foundation and may international partners.
He is curator of photographic exhibitions for Africa magazine including: Africa in the balloon, Good Morning Africa, One day in Africa, Africa in flight, In God’s country, Energy Africa.