Italy and the world in 200 images from the Publifoto Archive on display at CAMERA, Turin

On Saturday, April 13, 2019, at CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin, the exhibition Nel mirino - L’Italia e il mondo nell’Archivio Publifoto 1939-1981 will open to the public, which can be visited until June 16, 2019: this is the first review on the agency’s heritage, acquired in 2015 by Intesa Sanpaolo.

Curated by Aldo Grasso and Walter Guadagnini, the exhibition presents some of the most significant events in Italian and world history and news during a period between 1939 and 1981. Almost half a century of events told through about two hundred images made by photographers belonging to the most important Italianphotojournalistic agency of that time: the golden years of photojournalism.

To emphasize the fundamental link between the images and the press of the time, the exhibition is built on the model of an illustrated magazine, through sections devoted to politics, news, foreign affairs, society, culture and sports. In each section, the focus falls on facts and figures that made a decisive mark on these years and the stories that, thanks in part to the skill of the photographers, became part of the collective imagination of the 20th century.

“The enormous heritage left to us by Publifoto returns a world now consigned to history (1939-1981) but which also, thanks to this exhibition, finds new life and arouses intact emotions. The photographer’s work, in fact, is always twofold: on the one hand he plunders but at the same time preserves; he denounces but at the same time consecrates. That is why each collection of photographs is an adventurous journey, it is the passionate tale of this journey animated by the memory of miraculous feats, of characters, of appearances that maintain in the arrangement the intact vividness, the suspended and unrepeatable emotion of the gesture fixed once and for all,” says Aldo Grasso, massmediologist and co-curator of the exhibition.

The numerous episodes include the referendum and proclamation of the Italian Republic in 1946, the aftermath of theassassination attempt on Togliatti in July 1948, the criminal stories of Rina Fort and the Terrazzano kidnapping, thePolesine flood, the tragic end of the Grande Torino, the Beatles’ concert in Milan, the construction of the Italian highway network, and the protagonists of Cinecittà. A journey through history and news, through shots, sometimes vintage, sometimes reprinted starting from negatives in the Publifoto Archive.

The first room of the exhibition is dedicated to the daily life of the agency, to the work behind the scenes. Here a number of original objects from the Archive will be on display: chests of drawers, envelopes containing photographs divided by subject or by name, collections of magazines, all objects that allow us to understand the organization of work in an era still dominated by paper.

In order to understand the connection with the present-day reality of the Archives, some photographic works created for the exhibition by photographer Pino Musi will be exhibited, representing and interpreting environments and details of the Publifoto Archives in its present location.

For info: www.camera.to

Hours: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Tickets: Full 10 euros, reduced 6 euros (for children under 26 and adults over 70). Free for children up to 12 years old.

Image: The delirious audience at the Beatles’ concert at the Vigorelli in Milan, June 24, 1965 - Intesa Sanpaolo Publifoto Archive

Italy and the world in 200 images from the Publifoto Archive on display at CAMERA, Turin

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