Photography occupies an increasingly central role in the exhibition calendar of Palazzo Falletti di Barolo in Turin, which from Sept. 12, 2025 to Jan. 11, 2026 offers the exhibition BRUNO BARBEY. The Italians. The exhibition, produced by Ares in collaboration with Magnum Photos and theBruno Barbey Archive, brings together about a hundred black-and-white photographs taken between 1962 and 1966, personally selected by Bruno Barbey, who was born in Morocco in 1941 and died in Paris in 2020.
The main core of the exhibition comes from the reportage Barbey had devoted to Italy and Italians in the 1960s, a project initially intended for French publisher Robert Delpire as the third volume of the Encyclopédie essentielle series, known for juxtaposing images and texts. The series already included works such as Robert Frank’s Les Américains (1958) and René Burri’s Les Allemands (1962). Although unable to be published at the time due to unspecified circumstances, the portfolio, which immortalized Italy from the alleys of Naples to the piazzas of Milan, from the Spanish Steps in Rome to the center of Palermo, attracted the attention of Magnum Photos, which invited Barbey to collaborate with the agency in 1964. However, the project did not see the light of day until 2002, when Editions de La Martinière produced the volume, and then in 2022 it was published posthumously by Contrasto under the title Gli Italiani, becoming the reference for the selection in the exhibition.
The exhibition is completed by a ten-minute video curated by Caroline Thiénot-Barbey, the artist’s wife, which traces the genesis and development of the reportage, flanked by quotations from personalities from the world of entertainment and culture, useful for contextualizing the shots in the social and artistic context of the 1960s. The Italy photographed by Barbey emerges as a country in transformation: as a photography student in Switzerland, the author traveled in his Beetle exploring the entire Peninsula, finding fascination and energy in places that were close but perceived as exotic. The camera recorded a country still scarred by war but already animated by new hopes and changing social dynamics, highlighting regional differences and cultural similarities between North and South, between the industrial boom and slow reconstruction.
The photographs document every stratum of Italian society: from religious ceremonies to village festivals, from workers and peasants to the bourgeoisie and the newly rich, with a focus on the humble, representatives of the deep national identity. The images render archetypal figures reminiscent of the modern Commedia dell’arte, and seem to converse with the cinematography of the period, particularly the films of Pasolini, Visconti, and Fellini. Barbey’s black-and-white vision offers a restitution of collective memory, of the country’s familiar and public environments, and of the daily life of an Italy that, though scarred by the conflict, looked to the future with determination, seeking to rebuild social networks and deep ties.
The exhibition, curated by Caroline Thiénot-Barbey and co-produced by Ares in collaboration with Magnum Photos and the Bruno Barbey Archive, enjoys the patronage of Torino Metropoli and the support of Contrasto and Freecards, with Sky Arte as media partner. Available alongside the exhibition is the volume Gli Italiani di Bruno Barbey, published by Contrasto in 2022, which takes the public through the same perspective and selection presented in the rooms of Palazzo Falletti, offering a comprehensive and historically contextualized reading of the project.
Barbey’s photographic project is thus configured as a highly relevant historical and artistic document, capable of restoring with rigor and attention the social and economic evolution of Italy in the 1960s. Each image represents a specific moment of daily life, without celebratory filters: the portrait of the Peninsula is made of gestures, postures, glances and urban and rural spaces, which tell the complexity of a country in transformation. The exhibition makes it possible to confront the reality of the time, observing how tradition and modernity coexisted and how the differences between regions emerged clearly, without myths or romantic interpretations.
Barbey’s black-and-white shots, often bathed in intense luminous contrasts, document an era of change with technical precision and social sensitivity, returning a historical snapshot that still retains analytical and cultural value today. The reportage makes it possible to read the Peninsula through a foreign gaze, while immersed in a deep knowledge of places and people, and testifies to Barbey’s attention to the dignity of the subjects photographed, whether public figures or ordinary citizens. Italy in the 1960s thus emerges in its complexity, between reconstruction and progress, and in a balance between memory and modernity that the photographer was able to capture with consistency and care.
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| Bruno Barbey: 1960s Italy in black and white at Palazzo Falletti di Barolo |
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