In collaboration with
“Ambiziosamente tua” – Love and Social Classes in the Fotoromanzo
Curated by Frédérique Deschamps & Paolo Woods
It was 1947. Italy had barely emerged from five years of war. There were over two million people unemployed and inflation was skyrocketing. In the midst of this time a few clever souls invented the fotoromanzo. They understood that Italy needed to dream. The success of the fotoromanzo was immediate but in many quarters it drew people’s wrath. Intellectuals considered it a cheap sub-genre of literature; for Catholics, the photo-novella was clearly immoral; for the Communists, were just another kind of opium of the masses. Looking back on these frothy love stories today, they hardly seem to deserve such scorn and virulent criticism.
The exhibition puts on display photographic treasures––many for the very first time––from the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation in Milan, whose archives house hundreds of thousands of negatives and contact sheets from issues of Bolero film published between 1947 and the end of the 1970s.
Under the patronage of
Under the patronage and with the contribution of
Main partner
With the contribution of
Partner
Charity Partner
