The humans and their social space in the concrete and analogue nature of the reportage photography and social investigation’s master. The story unfolds along a path of more than 150 photographs, including the most famous, the lesser-known and the previously unpublished ones: a unique visual heritage, from the post-war period to the present day, characterised by coherent linguistic choices and a “craftsman”‘s approach to photographic practice.

From Venice captured in his first photographs to Milan, with its industries, intellectuals and workers’ struggles; from places of work (reportages made for Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Pirelli and especially Olivetti) to sites of everyday life; from psychiatric hospitals (with Morire di classe in 1968) to the world of gipsies; from many small rural villages to large cities; from L’Aquila hit by the earthquake to the MAXXI under construction photographed in 2009.

Through a fluid and non-chronological itinerary, the exhibition offers a reflection on the distinctive features of Berengo Gardin’s research: the centrality of man and his place in social space; the concrete but also poetically analogue nature of his “real” (uncut, unmanipulated) photography; the power and specificity of his way of constructing the narrative sequence, which leaves no room for simple descriptions of space but naturally builds stories.