Italy in the 1980s in Dino Ignani's photographs on display in Florence

The 1980s recounted with more than 400 photographs taken by Dino Ignani among video bars, discos and private parties documenting the creative texture of new lifestyles: this is the theme of the exhibition at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence from July 23 to September 19, entitled Dino Ignani. Dark Portraits - Florence/Rome 1982/1985, as part of the Anni Hottanta Remix exhibition and as part of theEstate Fiorentina programming. There are two series of images collected for the first time: those in black and white, taken in Rome starting in 1982, and those in color taken in Florence three years later and never previously exhibited.

"In Dino Ignani ’s photographs there is all theItaly of the 1980s, young and youthful, unique and blatant, incredible and spectacular. Above all, there is the Italy of the look in this gallery of portraits of young people, there is the image of their youth, tension, vitality, confusion, impishness, zest for life and fear of falling." This is how Roberto D’Agostino, a historian of the turmoil of the time, recounts the research that the famous Roman photographer conducted in the early 1980s on the young clubbers of the universe will be: a new musical aesthetic, but above all a radically different way of appearing on the social scene.

Known mainly for his portraits of Italian writers and poets, in the first half of the 1980s Ignani developed a cycle dedicated to the young people who frequented the capital’s nightlife. He invited them to be photographed according to a precise method: frontal framing, black-and-white film, a preferably neutral set, minimal margin left to the background, and a restrained shutter speed. The result is an archive of hundreds of images that, behind an apparently standardized and detached representation of that world, actually captures all the nuances of a new way of being and appearing.

Straddling the long wave that the punk movement had imprinted on the U.S. and British music scene, Italy, too, is witnessing an authentic musical renaissance. The country woke up from its torpor: post punk, synthpop, electronic influences and goth scenarios were intertwined as one communicative urgency together with the concept of underground. Epicenters of this authentic artistic revolution two cities: Bologna and Florence. Thus began the stories of bands such as Skiantos, Litfiba, Gas Nevada and Diaframma. Ignani intercepts the dark people and records and enhances their smallest details: makeup, accessories and hairstyles are the great protagonists of the images; the same elements that, later, will be reabsorbed by the world of fashion. And directly from the latter come the shots taken for the opening of Florence/London. Art Fashion 1985 at the historic Florentine boutique Luisa Via Roma: a spectacular series of portraits, which the photographer chose to make in color slides, where it is possible to recognize various protagonists of the creativity of the time.

The exhibition is curated by Matteo Di Castro and Bruno Casini and the exhibition project by studio POMO.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Marino Marini Museum.

Pictured: Dino Ignani, Dark Portraits, Rome 1982-85

Italy in the 1980s in Dino Ignani's photographs on display in Florence

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