Enrico Cattaneo was born in Milan in 1933 and passed away in his Milanese home/studio on July 5, 2019. After completing his scientific studies, he began exploring photography in 1955, thanks to a gift from his mother of his first camera. He carried out a personal documentation of the city, capturing houses and factories, modes of transportation, moments of acceptance and rebellion, and the solitude and camaraderie of workers. Cattaneo joined the Milanese Photographic Circle, where he received accolades that motivated him to deepen his commitment to social photography. He co-founded the Gruppo 66, and his photographs from that period reflect a reaction against the comforting images of pictorialist aesthetics, instead presenting provocative landscapes of landfills.

Becoming a professional in 1963, he focused almost exclusively on reproducing works of art, collaborating with painters, sculptors, architects, galleries, and contemporary art publishers. Some notable names he worked with include Tino Vaglieri, Gianfranco Ferroni, Sandro Leporini, Alik Cavaliere, Mauro Staccioli, and Franco Somaini.

The rise of avant-garde groups like Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme saw Cattaneo as a key figure, capable of transforming documentation into genuine, militant testimony of the events. Over time, Cattaneo’s photographs gained dual significance: on one hand, they served as valuable and often unique records of events, and on the other, possessing their own autonomous life, they began to be exhibited in galleries and published in books from the early 1970s onwards.