Photographer for seventy years, Gianni Berengo Gardin was one of the most active, prolific and representative authors of the Italian panorama. He has created countless reports, published over 260 books and created many exhibitions. All his activity was characterized by an intense humanism tinged with irony. His proverbial understatement, which protected him from overly violent interpretations, and the respect he demonstrated for reality, made him one of the most notable storytellers of contemporary society. The story told by Berengo's images unfolds in a black and white world, made up of faces, gestures, landscapes, architecture, daily events, in which the flow of time seems to stop. This is the secret of the immutable modernity of Berengo's work: in the ability to maintain an unaltered "classical" look and at the same time to accept all the encounters, all the challenges that fast-paced contemporary reality puts in its path. His is a clearly essential photography, with the intent of sober honesty, which does not aim to interpret or suggest but only to tell. With participation, humor and great poetry. This volume collects the largest retrospective of his work and his special "art without art". From the first images of a black and white Venice, to the photos for Pannunzio's Il Mondo, to the Paris of the 1950s, to the denunciation of the mental asylums of '68, up to Zavattini's Luzzara, to the gypsies, life in the factories, the daily life of Italians... Moments captured by the greatest Italian photographer, attentive and sensitive interpreter. The book, introduced by a conversation with Goffredo Fofi and an interview by Frank Horvat, is accompanied by an annotated bibliography narrated by the author himself.