As as a
teenager he showed interest in the world of art and photography. The son
of a painter who was friends with De Chirico, in 1955 he started his
career as a photographer with Michelangelo Como in Via Margutta. From
1961 to 1963 he worked for Life Magazine as assistant to Eric Lessing,
one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency.
He actively took part in
the sixties scene and his photographs, as well as providing precious
testimony, are often the only proof of events of which otherwise we
would not have any record. Complex works of environmental art – hard to
trace to a single point of view – are portrayed in a single, never
celebrative image, in the attempt to capture the relationship between
the work, the surroundings and the spectator. After the so-called ‘hot
years’ when he became the photographer/reader of avant-garde
contemporary art, he experimented with his own language. This led to his
"Contatti con la superficie sensibile", comprising black and white
works created through direct contact with light-sensitised photographic
paper, presented at the Incontri internazionali d’Arte at Palazzo
Taverna in Rome in 1972. In the 1980s he approached colour for the first
time, and while retaining his intimate dialogue with the work and the
artists, he abandoned loyal descriptions of reality to highlight its
mystery.
Abate's photos have been displayed in many national and
international shows.