Another weekend – another photo exhibition (have you read my post from the SteveMcCurry exhibition?). This time we were a bit more south. The Significant Other and I spent the weekend in (our former hometown) Genoa on the Ligurian coast to visit a dear friend. And, as things go, there was another exhibition in town – “L’Italia di Magnum”. Another opportunity to see great photography and do some street shooting inside the exhibition.
Twenty of Magnum Photos agency’s extraordinary photographers and over two hundred of their photographs tell the story of Italy from the post-war period to today. Their work tell stories large and small, customs, characters and places of Italy in the last seventy years, in a fascinating interweaving of well-known and lesser-known images that make up the social and visual fabric of this fascinating country.
On dispay in the exhibition hall, in the bowels of Genoa’s beautiful and storied Palazzo Ducale (that was also the site of the infamous G8 summit in 2001), were works by Magnum Greats Henri Cartier-Bresson (from his trip to Italy in the 1930’s), Robert Capa (images from the end of World War II, showing a country in ruins, destroyed by five years of conflict) and David Seymour, who in 1947 filmed tourists returning to visit the Sistine Chapel.
The exhibition, divided into decades, winds its way through the photographs of Elliott Erwitt (my all time favorite photographer, as you probably know), René Burri and Herbert List, who represent the 1950s with the contradictions of Rome, the beginnings of Cinecittà and the Picasso exhibition in Milan. Next are Thomas Hoepker, who immortalized the triumph of Cassius Clay (later Mohamed Ali) at the 1960 Rome Olympics, Bruno Barbey, and Erich Lessing.
The 1970s are represented by Ferdinando Scianna and the religious festivals in Sicily (the title image of this post), Raymond Depardon with his poignant series on asylums, and Leonard Freed with his shots of the controversial referendum on divorce. And then the eighties with Martin Parr and Patrick Zachmann, the nineties and 2000’s with the nightlive in Rome’s discos by Alex Majoli, the reportage of war in ex-Yugoslavia by Peter Marlow and the terrible happenings around the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa in the photographs of Thomas Dworzak.
All in all another great evening spent with photography, looking at and learning from the masters of Magnum, while doing some exhibition street photography.
All images taken with my iPhone 12 Pro Max, some cropping in Lightroom Classic.
If you are looking for tips and inspirations around photography, be sure to visit my free Learning Center.
Have a great Sunday
Marcus
Related Posts:
What a wonderful exhibition. I would love to see it.
How wonderful to see the amazing work of all those great and magnificent photographers in one place. Marcus , I like that you also included the visitors, it makes it all more alive, especially in the third image ( I believe) I like the casting shadows of the two women. Have a great week.
What a great find.. you obviously enjoyed the exhibition
Thanks, Diana, glad you liked the post! Marcus