Born in Bagheria in 1943, started taking photographs in the 1960s. It was then that he began to photograph the Sicilian people systematically. ''Feste Religiose in Sicilia'' (1965) included an essay by the Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia, and it was the first of many collaborations with famous writers. Scianna moved to Milan in 1966. The following year he started working for the weekly magazine ''L'Europeo''. He also wrote on politics for ''Le Monde Diplomatique'' and on literature and photography for ''La Quinzaine Littéraire''. In 1977 he published ''Les Siciliens'' in France and ''La Villa Dei Mostri'' in Italy. In 1982 he joined Magnum Photos. He entered the field of fashion photography in the late 1980s. At the end of the decade he published a retrospective, ''Le Forme del Caos'' (1989). Scianna returned to exploring the meaning of religious rituals with ''Viaggio a Lourdes'' (1995), then two years later he published a collection of images of sleepers - ''Dormire Forse Sognare'' (To Sleep, Perchance to Dream). In 2002 Scianna completed ''Quelli di Bagheria'', a book on his home town in Sicily, in which he tries to reconstruct the atmosphere of his youth through writings and photographs of Bagheria and the people who live there.