La conquista della realtà: fotografia e urbanistica in Italia tra ricostruzione e crisi energetiche (1945-1979)

In the years starting just after WWII up to the nineteen seventies, a sizable group of photographers and town-planners create a vast amount of images documenting evoked or broken traditions, selecting territories, settlements, artifacts and finds that all together could form the material for a generational album. Their explorations of the reality do not stem from the intent to restore the history or identity of the various local realities based upon primary artefacts, places and individuals but to get records of way of life. The result is a novel archeological imaginary, representations of “minor” works and utilitarian structures weathered by time, usage, and neglect. At the heart of this work there is the renewal of representation on the part of photographers, the common ideal strain to the nature and quality of the relationship between formal and informal landscapes, for the places to reinvent through the use of a new visual alphabet and a different kind of narration.