A leading portrayer of urban landscapes died on 13 February at 69. Born in Milan, Gabriele Basilico studied to be an architect but became a photographer, undertaking his first shoots soon after graduating, when he completed ‘Portraits of Factories’, a look at the outskirts of his native city. This would give way to a more poetic language – moving away from the cold rigor of Bernd and Hilla Becher, then so in vogue –, and this approach found its best expression from the 1980s on, in his 2,000 takes of the French landscape, the series on war-torn Beirut, and the diptychs lyrically superposing objects, people andlandscapes.