This exhibition consists of 77 photographs from the Photographic Archive of the Museo di Roma. The photographs by Basilico, Bossaglia, Chiaramonte, Cresci, Ghirri, Guidi and Koch, were shown in the exhibition “Rome: The historic Rioni in the images of seven photographers in 1990”, with the addition of nine photographs taken by Gianni Berengo Gardin in 1986, and seven by Andrea Jemolo shown in the 2006 exhibition “Architecture in Rome today”.

The images portray Rome in its most iconic sites as well as its minor and everyday aspects, and document some of the changes the city underwent over two decades (as shown for instance in Ghirri’s image of the Ara Pacis in its 1930s' setting, and then in Jemolo’s image of the Richard Meier building).

Another interesting aspect of the exhibition is that it illustrates the shift from documentary photography rooted in photojournalism, represented by the images of Koch and Bossaglia, where people and street life is often the focus of attention, to the new Italian landscape photography of the 1980s, spearheaded by Luigi Ghirri alongside practitioners such as Guidi, Basilico, Chiaramonte, and its legacy in the work of Jemolo, where place in its own right takes centre stage; the works of Berengo Gardin and Cresci act as a transition between the two approaches.

Jacopo Benci