Among the major works of the Neorealism there is a small book, published in 1941 by Corrente a Milano, with photographs by Alberto Lattuada and a poem by Ernesto Treccani. Lattuada writes that he has tried to give a picture of the relationship existing between men and things… he photographed, in fact, people along the roads, men at work or reading poems, overcome men. All pictures communicate the desire for life, the need for love and hope. He is therefore the forerunner of the movies and novels that would lay the foundations of the Italian culture after the Second World War.
The exhibition at Milan Arts Centre belongs to a series of events aimed at rediscovering with a critical eye Italian photographers who worked in the period between 1945 and 1960 according to the principles and guiding lines mentioned by Lattuada.
The exhibition includes 50 pictures by nine of the major exponents of the Neorealism in the Italian photography. Federico Patellani photographed Italy of the period immediately after the Liberation and Sardinia's miners of 1950; Tino Petrelli took photographs that tell the story of Africo, a village in Calabria; Piero Donzelli photographed homely people's everyday life and the Po Valley's landscape; Mario De Biasi gives an accurate picture of people crowding together and of the space in big towns; Franco Pinna pictures the rural landscape with peasants and shepherds in Southern Italy; Enrico Pasquali photographed rice weeders and labourers of paddy fields in the Po Valley in Lower Emilia; Nino Migliori pictures the small villages of the Italian provinces. Finally, Mario Giacomelli presents dramatic and innovative sequences of "Scanno" and "Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi" by Cesare Pavese. Enzo Sellerio pictures the Palermo of the 60s, when changed times had opened the way for a new and more complex cultural and political climate.
About half a century later, we can now understand what the authors really wanted to convey when photographing reality. In their remaining faithful to the dramatic situation they represented, they always tried to reveal what really encourages people's life. Zavattini wrote: "The first reality, that is what is under your eyes when looking at things, is no longer enough. Also the slightest things and feelings that are often regarded as ordinary moods should instead communicate the power inside themselves. We need that things convey something more than what we immediately see when looking at them… this second reality is the only quality that makes them deserve being pictured."
So, in the pictures by these nine authors, places and characters in a poor, apparently underdeveloped village, become a revelation of the true condition of men anywhere. The secret of the second reality, which can be seen in these images, is what arouses interest in the photography of this period.
50 images by 9 artists
Federico Patellani,photographs taken in the days following the Liberation and the faces of Sardinia's miners in 1950;
Tino Petrelli, the story of Africo, a village in Calabria;
Piero Donzelli, homely gestures of the everyday life and open spaces in the Po Valley landscape;
Mario De Biasi,people crowding together and the space of big towns;
Franco Pinna, rural landscape with peasant and shepherds in Southern Italy;
Enrico Pasquali, the odyssey of rice weeders and labourers in Lower Emilia;
Nino Migliori, life in the small villages of the Italian province;
Mario Giacomelli, the innovative sequences of "Scanno" and "Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi" by Pavese;
Enzo Sellerio, the Palermo of the '60s in the new political climate
Enrica Vigano was entrusted in 1999 with the supervision of an exhibition of 100 images hosted around Europe and the United States, from which the series of pictures exhibited in Milan has been taken.
The exhibition at Milan Arts Centre belongs to a series of events aimed at rediscovering with a critical eye Italian photographers who worked in the period between 1945 and 1960 according to the principles and guiding lines mentioned by Lattuada, a master who always tried to give a picture of the relationship existing between men and things
"People along the roads, men at work or reading poems, overcome men. All pictures communicate the desire for life, the need for love and hope". With a small book of 26 photographs, including also a poem by Ernesto Treccani, published in 1941, Lattuada became the forerunner of the movies and novels that would lay the foundations of the Italian post-war culture.
The exhibition hosted at Milan Arts Centre presents works by photographers who tried to show the "second reality". According to Cesare Zavattini, "The first reality, that is what is under your eyes when looking at things, is no longer enough. Also the slightest things and feelings that are often regarded as ordinary moods should instead communicate the power inside themselves. We need that things convey something more than what we immediately see when looking at them… this second reality is the only quality that makes them deserve being pictured."
Among the major works of the Neorealism there is a small book, published in 1941 by Corrente a Milano, with photographs by Alberto Lattuada and a poem by Ernesto Treccani. Lattuada writes that he has tried to give a picture of the relationship existing between men and things… he photographed, in fact, people along the roads, men at work or reading poems, overcome men. All pictures communicate the desire for life, the need for love and hope. He is therefore the forerunner of the movies and novels that would lay the foundations of the Italian culture after the Second World War.