Paolo Gioli was born in Sarzano di Rovigo in 1942; he studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Venice and then in New York, where he came into contact with the New American Cinema, the New York School, and where he met Leo Castelli and Martha Jackson. In 1970 he settled in Rome where he frequented the authors of the Cooperativa Cinema Indipendente and the Filmstudio, and started to produce his own films. He moved to Milan in 1976 and focused his attention on photography: in this period he started using polaroid photos as a powerful means to broaden his research on instant photography, printing his work on different materials such as paper and canvas. Gioli is considered one of the most important photographers and film makers of his generation, and has held numerous solo exhibits in some of the most important museums such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the MoMA in New York and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.