Alex Fakso was born in 1977, in Bassano del Grappa (It).
Since 2001 he has been based in Milan. At Around the age of 13, he discovers the skateboarding and graffiti world. At 14 he was already writing on walls and trains, by the age of 16 he was also photographing. Due to the importance of the hip hop scene at that time, the graffiti was an exploding phenomena in Italy in 1994.
A lot was going on around the entire peninsula, every city
had it’s own writers paint the trains who thereafter were traveling round the country spreading the phenomena and being a great opportunity for such graffiti artists to express themselves to the fullest.
Just like most writers of that period, Alex Fakso preserves a memory of his graffitti on trains and train-reisers through photographs taken by himself.
But a simple picture of a train does not satisfy his artistic ego. He enrolls as a student of the Arts Institute of Cittadella (Padova, It) to attend the graphic design and photography courses. Such studies will help him perfect his technique and will inspire him to pursue his own research aimed at the underground photography. Alex did not want to loose track of all those nights spent in between trains, all those sensations felt… That is why he inquires into the writer’s world, their lifestyle, those exciting moments and the process of developing an entire writing project.’ Therefore, during the four years of studies he observes such a reality through a new prospective, experimenting new framings, new techniques under a profound study of contrasts between light and shadow.
The pictures taken during this period of time feature feeble, artificial lights. The subjects are basically long flashy shots capturing writers’ “missions” inside train deposits.

In 1998, freshly back from NY, in 1998, Alex will finally become conscious about the evocative power of his photos. Thereafter his attention focuses on capturing every single moment of a writing action in order to portray in one single shot the movement, the tension, the adrenaline, the fear, the intensity of what’s happening in front of him. At this time Alex livens up his pictures thanks to the use of fish-eye. He already used it frequently on his skating-pics which were published by the best Italian skateboarding magazines. But his attention is totally absorbed by the graffiti world.
During 2001 Alex spends 8 months in Los Angeles getting in contact with the first galleries and collectors that will become the first buyers of his works. By the end of that year, his pictures are on the cover of Graphotism, one the most popular graffitti magazines worldwide. Also 8 pages of the magazine are dedicated to the young photographer from Northern Italy. The first personal exhibition “In Action” takes place in 2002 in Milano.
The same year his pics are at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Glasgow, during the “Night Activity” exhibition. The following exhibitions are: “Dumbo meet Fakso” at Neue Sentimantal Film in 2003; “I`ll Comunication II” at Urbis (Museum of Contemporary Arts & Urban Life), Manchester in 2004; back to Scotland in 2005, Alex takes part in the “Break it Down” show. Soon after he’s featured at the “Urban Edge Show” in Milano and at the “Urbana, la città in trasformazione” in Biella(It).
During the last years that Alex has spent between Milan, London and Tokyo, his eye has been catching also the locations where the writers mostly operate.
The silence, the neglect of the underground tunnels, the entrances and exits of these galleries being the only contact with the outer worlds, are the impressive scenario of his protagonists.
Alex Fakso is absolutely the most representative European artist, able to transmit with authentic vividness the atmospheres and the sensations of a parallel world that breaths and moves through the darkest bends of our cities.