Elio Mazzacane was born in Naples in 1967. He currently lives in Rome where he works as a director for the RAI 3 TV channel. Mazzacane discovered photography as a child, with the camera obscura of his uncle Lello Mazzacane, an anthropologist, photographer and pioneer of Multivision (a projection of images on several screens with music and sound).
He continued to develop his passion for images, but shifted his attention from photography to video. After studying at La Sapienza University in Rome and at King’s College in London, he graduated in Biological Psychology with Alberto Oliverio. In 2000 he became a director for the RAI, first with RAI Educational then with RAI Uno and later with RAI Tre. In 2007 he was given a special mention in the Ilaria Alpi TV Journalism Prize. In 2005 he filmed the video poem Non è la stessa lingua che parli, which was the beginning of his collaboration with the author Laura Pugno and was shown at poetry and literature festivals in Verona and Ancona in 2006 and 2007.
In 2006 he returned to photography to illustrate the poetic texts of Laura Pugno in the volume Il colore oro for the multimedia collection Fuoriformato directed by Andrea Cortellessa. The three short poems in the book investigate the themes of the transformation of the real body to the virtual, the search for perfection and the birth of language as a defining moment for mankind. These are reinterpreted in photography, following a line of research that includes statues, the human body in performance and animal shade/reflection
He continued to collaborate with Laura Pugno in 2007 and 2008, with a special project for the novel Sirene, presented at the third edition of the Fotografia Europea Festival in Reggio Emilia.