2023-09-29 20:46:20
Open to the public until 8 October in the halls of Palazzo Merulana, home of the Elena and Claudio Cerasi Foundation, ‘When life was sweet. Rome: misery, beauty and courage’, photographic exhibition of the Riccardi Archive curated by Maurizio Riccardi, Giovanni Currado and Marino Paoloni. “A thousand-year-old city with a thousand facets, an open-air museum, a tourist destination dreamed of all over the world, with its history, its monuments and its streets, Rome represents in the international imagination the idea of grandeur and immortality – we read in a note from the exhibition – On the margins of this greatness, less strong and secure realities have always coexisted.
“After the Second World War, these realities were confused toponymatically with the monuments and buildings in the center – explains the note – The post-war poverty was there for all to see, perhaps because it was highlighted by the contrast deriving from the wonders that the City Eterna offered. In a few years the city and the country experienced an economic boom and slowly, as often happens, they began to forget the difficulties that had characterized the recent past.”
Carlo Riccardi’s photos tell this temporal cross-section. A tumult of courageous looks mixed with scenarios of absolute misery, the hopes of those who wanted to start over and the first signs, positive and negative, of the country becoming ‘great’. A set of impactful visual information for the new generations, to open a debate and reflections, also through the use of historical photography.
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