Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni)

Originally published in 1909, the Futurist Manifesto embodied the spirit of restless artists welcoming an industrial future rooted in speed, technology, mechanization, and industry. To the movement’s founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurism also stood for the exaltation of personality and originality. 

In that spirit, a 24 year old artist named Guglielmo Sansoni ran his own death announcement in the press and had a casket wheeled through the streets of Bologna. From the procession he shouted that the Sansoni of the past had died, and ‘Tato Futuriste’ was born. From that moment on, ‘Tato’, as he became known, would be one of the Futurist movement’s primary champions. 

Just two years after Tato and Marinetti jointly wrote the Manifesto della Fotografia futurista (Manifesto of Futurist Photography), Tato made the present image of Tullio d’Albisola, a fellow Futurist artist. The portrait sitting coincided with the publication of a volume of d’Albisola’s poetry. 

While Tato also worked as a traditional commercial portraitist, the present image is emblematic of his experimental practice, wherein he created layered, complex compositions in the darkroom, combining photography and text.