Exploring Italian Realism through the photographs of Italian collector Paolo Morello as part of the 7th Fashion and Style in Photography international festival.

I hope you’re having a great time wherever you happen be right now. I’ve been very busy these past few weeks, running around town to one exhibition after another. For some odd reason the past month has been full of events with a lot of foreign artists visiting the capital. If you’ve been listening to us for the past few days then you know that I am currently exploring the 7th international festival Fashion and Style in Photography which has been put together by the Moscow House of Photography. There are a lot of artists and works being showcased. I have been dedicating each day to one artist whose work I found to be fascinating and today I have one more for you. Paolo Morello is a man of many talents. He is a photographer, a teacher, an author and a collector of art. His exhibition here in Moscow does not showcase his work but the work of other people. He has a huge collection which has thousands of photographs. I can’t even imagine where he stores it all. The pictures on display here are vintage prints that cover the history of Italian photography from the post war years through the mid seventies. It’s a great opportunity to get a glimpse of a different country, a different world and how people there lived. What I liked about it was that you saw all aspects of life. You could see people doing their everyday chores, then there would be a gorgeous picture of a piazza, some disturbing images of a man being lynched in public and one of my favorites, a beautiful woman walking along the street and men drooling over her. There are so many different pictures that it got me thinking how and why these particular images were chosen.

It’s been organized by the Moscow House of Photography and it showcases the work of local and foreign artists. The exhibitions are scattered around the capital in some of the best venues. The collection I’m talking about today is called Italian Realism and it details the years between 1945 and 1975. This was before the invasion of television so people relied heavily on photography both as a means to capture information as well as receive it. And apparently this was also the time that Italians started looking at photography as a profession. All these elements combined, helped Paolo Morello end up with a collection that shows one of the most interesting periods in Italian history.  When I was looking at the photographs, what I loved was the simplicity of the times.

There are many works on display as part of the festival but today I am focusing on the Italian Realism exhibition which covers the history of Italian photography from the post war years through the mid seventies. The exhibition was curated by Alessandra Mauro and Paolo Morello who owns all of the photographs. There are 250 vintage prints from leading Italian photographers of the time. The exhibition is currently on display at the Manege exhibition hall. All in all there are about 30 different photographers who are showcased through this collection. We already heard what Paolo Morello had to say about how he collected the photographs and how he chose which ones to display. Paolo Morello is no stranger to photography. He has taught the subject in many universities across Italy. In Milan he even established and directed a course on the History and Management of photography. Apparently, it was the first European two-year master’s programme devoted entirely to photography. But that’s not where his resume ends. He’s also the contributing editor of a magazine called ‘History of Photography’.  He’s written many volumes on the Italian photography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the moment he’s writing a book on the history of photography that focuses on the period between 1839 and the year 2000. Now that sound like a massive undertaking. The man obviously loves photography and knows it inside out. The thousands of prints in his collection are proof of that I think. Actually he’s in the middle of trying to establish a museum now which will house all of these photographs.