Florence, all the beauty of Italy in a photo exhibition, from the Alinari to today

The charm and diversity ofItaly, its landscapes, creativity and people is in Italiae. From the Alinari to the masters of contemporary photography one of two exhibitions that, from June 25 to October 10, 2021, occupies the spaces of the Palazzina del Forte di Belvedere in Florence as part of the initiative Ieri, oggi, domani. Italy self-portrait in the mirror, an initiative promoted by the City of Florence and organized by MUS.E with the support of Fondazione CR Firenze, Unicoop Firenze and Mazzoleni.Italiae, curated by Rita Scartoni and Luca Criscenti, born from an initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, produced by Fratelli Alinari Idea SpA, is promoted by Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia (a body founded by the Region of Tuscany for the preservation, management and enhancement of the Alinari photographic heritage).

An archive of 75 photographers (from Gianni Berengo Gardin to Paolo Pellegrin, from Gabriele Basilico to Gian Paolo Barbieri, from Luigi Ghirri to Mario Giacomelli and Ferdinando Scianna, just to name a few) who have portrayed the Bel Paese each in their own way and with their own peculiar interest. A century and a half of history in a composite anthology of shots, to recreate an ideal gallery of portraits and memories, capable of testifying to the richness of the country and at the same time to the extraordinary vitality of Italian photography. The selection of shots, without claiming to summarize in its entirety the complexity of Italian photography, is in any case a challenge, and a means to explore aesthetic choices and languages that have spanned more than 160 years of images, including atelier photos, pictorialism, conceptualism, chronicle and artistic research. It is a journey that begins with the photographs of the Fratelli Alinari and the vast world that grew up around them, in terms of collections and archives represented, to reach, through the great masters of twentieth-century photography, to the most up-to-date experiments. The result can also be read as a brief compendium of the history of photographic techniques starting with the calotype and arriving at virtual photography in games.

“The exhibition opens with a work by Walter Niedermayr and closes with a touching shot by Paolo Pellegrin,” explains curator Rita Scartoni. “In between are many authors, all beloved, from 20th-century masters such as Mario Giacomelli, Luigi Ghirri, and Gabriele Basilico, to contemporaries Alex Majoli, Olivo Barbieri, Mario Spada, and Gabriele Croppi, to emerging artists such as Paolo Spigariol. In this kaleidoscope of gazes to bind are the images of the Alinari Archives. The Archives opens up and dialogues with the contemporary even outside rigid chronological grids, playing with formats and the theme of reproduction and ’reproducibility,’ of photography, to capture through assonances that variegated set of enchantments, knowledge, and contradictions that make Italy a special country. And it is with this key of interpretation, multiplicity - multiplicity of gazes, landscapes, artistic and cultural riches - that Italy re-presents itself to the world, after a particularly hard time. In fact, this one in Florence is the only Italian venue for the exhibition, which, in duplicate, has already begun a substantial touring program to many European countries (Minsk, St. Petersburg and Berlin being the already confirmed stops) and outside Europe. I want to believe that casting a glance at who we are, and who we have been, can help us focus on the challenges of the future.”

The exhibition is divided into three sections(Landscapes, Works, Faces), each intended to constitute itself as an ideal geographical, historical and artistic journey, to capture, in a multifaceted variety of themes, the mutations of a country in constant evolution: North and South, city and country, work and festivals, tradition and innovation, social history and cultural life. Visions where the surprise is in the “staging,” in the original choices of each performer.

Photographs by: Stabilimento Alinari, Vittorio Alinari, Aurelio Amendola, Stabilimento Anderson, Isabella Balena, Vincenzo Balocchi, Gian Paolo Barbieri, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Raffaello Bencini, Giorgio Benvenuti, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Studio Betti Borra, Antonio Biasiucci, Piergiorgio Branzi, Emanuele Bresciani, Stabilimento Brogi, Luigi Bussolati, Henri Chouanard, Cesare Colombo, Studio Corsini, Mario Cresci, Gabriele Croppi, Giovanni Crupi, Gustave de Beaucorps, Stefano De Luigi, Simone Donati, Franco Fontana, Paolo Formichella, Andrea Frazzetta, Maurizio Galimberti, Alessandro Gandolfi, Luigi Ghirri, Mario Giacomelli, Luigi Leoni, Stefano Lista, Massimo Listri, Lorenzo Maccotta, Alex Majoli, Giuseppe Malovich, Emiliano Mancuso, Fosco Maraini, Achille Mauri, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Nino Migliori, Carlo Mollino, Davide Monteleone, Walter Niedermayr, Cristina Nuññez, Paolo Pellegrin, Mauro Puccini, Sergio Ramazzotti, Mauro Ranzani, Fulvio Roiter, Giorgio Roster, Ferdinando Scianna, Vittorio Sella, Shobha, Massimo Siragusa, Giorgio Sommer, Mario Spada, Paolo Spigariol, Bruno Stefani, Marino Sterle, George Tatge, Giuliana Traverso, Michele Vestrini, Studio Villani, Massimo Vitali, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Marion Wulz, Wanda Wulz, Italo Zannier, Bruno Zanzottera, Otto Zenker.

For all information you can visit the MUS.E official website.

Pictured: Anderson Establishment, remains of the Villa of the Quintilii on the Appian Way, c. 1880, Alinari Archives-Anderson Archive, Florence

Florence, all the beauty of Italy in a photo exhibition, from the Alinari to today

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