Biography
George Tatge was born in 1951 of an Italian mother and American father. He lived in Europe and in the Middle East most of his youth and studied English Literature at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where he also began photographing under the guidance of the Hungarian photographer Michael Simon. In 1973 he moved to Italy where he worked in Rome as a journalist and then in Todi, Umbria, where he lived for 12 years working as a freelance photographer and writer (reviews for Art Forum). His first exhibition in Italy was in 1973 at the Diaframma Gallery in Milan. His first book, Perugia terra vecchia terra nuova, came out in 1984. From 1986 to 2003 he was Director of Photography at the Alinari Archives in Florence, for which he produced photographs throughout Italy, published in many of their volumes. He has held workshops and exhibitions throughout the world and his photographs can be found in major museum collections in the U.S. and in Europe, such as the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the George Eastman House in Rochester, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Centre Canadien d’Architecture in Montreal, the Helmut Gernsheim Collection in Mannheim, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. His work has been exhibited at the American Academy in Rome (solo) in 1981, at the MASP of Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1988 (solo), at the Venice Biennale in 1995, at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice in 2005, at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim in 2003, at the GEH in Rochester in 2004 and at Rome’s MAXXI in 2007. His solo exhibition “Presences--Italian Landscapes” opened at the Villa Bardini of Florence in 2008 and has since then traveled to the CAMEC of La Spezia, the Museum of Trastevere in Rome, Palazzo Gopcevic in Trieste and opened in Perugia at the Rocca Paolina in September 2010. In 2010 he was awarded the
Friuli Venezia Giulia Prize for Photography. He lives in Florence, Italy.
