The contemporary Italian landscape in the shots of Massimo Baldini on display in Bologna

The Sala Cavazza of the Complesso del Baraccano, in Bologna’s Santo Stefano district, is hosting from Sept. 29 to Oct. 8, 2023, the photographic exhibition Italia Revisited. Sample for Images by Massimo Baldini, curated by Claudio Marra. Along with the artist’s book of the same name, eighty-six color photographs focusing on the contemporary Italian landscape will be on display.

In the mid-1980s, Viaggio in Italia by a group of photographers, starting with Luigi Ghirri, revolutionized the iconography of the landscape in Italy, freeing it from the old model - postcard. In Ghirri’s time, the transition of the Italian production system from large postwar factories to small businesses scattered in industrial districts had just begun.

Italia Revisited intends to urge the observer to a new look, participatory and at the same time disenchanted. According to the photographer, the country of grandparents and great-grandparents no longer exists. There is no point in picturing it as a fairy world to be drawn upon through “poetic” photographs that obliterate reality. In his opinion, if we want to save Italy’s great beauty we will first have to lucidly observe what it has become and then reinvent it. For the landscape is marked entirely by the pervasiveness of production, and art has become a present element in ordinary life. Art artifacts of various kinds, often contaminated by kitsch, populate hotels, bars, squares, courtyards, gardens. Here, then, the lampshade of a lamp dialogues with Brunelleschi’s dome, Michelangelo’s David guards an ATM, a Riace bronze guarantees a Tripadvisor recommendation, the decorator of a pizzeria quotes Edvard Munch.

The exhibition is open to the public daily from 5 to 8 p.m.

Massimo Baldini, Italy Revisited (2022; giclée print on paper, 30 x 36 cm). Courtesy the artist

Massimo Baldini,ited

, Italy Revisited

Massimo Baldini,ited

The contemporary Italian landscape in the shots of Massimo Baldini on display in Bologna

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