Guido Mocafico

Guido Mocafico was born in 1962. Sources describe him variously as Swiss and as Italian born in Switzerland, and he is reported to divide his time between Switzerland and Paris. He studied photography for about two years at the Vevey School of Photography in Switzerland; no degree title or exact years of attendance are documented in available sources.

He built an early career in commercial and editorial photography before turning his still-life technique toward extended personal projects. Working with a large-format camera and controlled studio lighting, he produced a series of monographs published by Steidl, including Venenum (2005), Medusa (2006), Serpens (2007), Movement (2008), and Stilleven (2012), each organized around a single subject such as venomous animals or scientific specimens. His work has been exhibited internationally since 1999 in London, Paris, Munich, and Tokyo. In 2008 the Rencontres d'Arles festival presented his photographs of animal remains and trompe l'oeil vanities, with designer Christian Lacroix contributing a curatorial note on the show.

As of mid-2026, Mocafico continues to work and exhibit. No obituary, gallery statement, or press report indicates that he has died.

Mocafico is consistently described by galleries and market platforms as a specialist in still-life photography, valued for the technical precision of his large-format images of venomous animals, marine invertebrates, and historical scientific models. His 2008 presentation at the Rencontres d'Arles festival, built around trompe l'oeil vanities and animal remains, drew a curatorial note from designer Christian Lacroix, who described the work as beginning with animal skulls set against the ruins of Beirut. No verifiable major photography prizes or institutional honors could be confirmed for him in the sources reviewed for this profile.

Mocafico's auction footprint is small and concentrated in photography sales at Phillips, Sotheby's, and Christie's. Phillips' own auction history page for the artist lists a top result of GBP 93,750 for the portfolio Selected Images from Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, though the exact sale date is not given in the sources available to this profile. The highest result with a confirmed sale house and date is Serpens, which sold for GBP 92,500 at Phillips London on 17 November 2014. A further confirmed result is Boiga Dendrophila Melanota (from Serpens), sold at Phillips London on 3 November 2016 for GBP 50,000 against an estimate of GBP 40,000 to 60,000. MutualArt tracks roughly 40 of his works at auction, consistent with a modest but active secondary market for a specialist photographer.

Mocafico's market is thin relative to his gallery profile. Auction activity is real but limited to a few dozen tracked lots, concentrated in London photography sales, so a single result can move the overall picture more than it would for an artist with a deeper trading history. There is no catalogue raisonne, and the public collection holdings identified so far, France's Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, L'Imagerie in Lannion, and the Musee de la Publicite at Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris, are notable but modest next to his commercial and gallery presence. Collectors should treat any single high result, including the reported GBP 93,750 Blaschka portfolio sale, with some caution until its exact sale date can be independently confirmed.