People from Southern Italy
A series of neo-realist photographs portraying people from Southern Italy in the 1950s
People from Southern Italy by Nino MiglioriFondazione Nino Migliori
It was not in search of pretty pictures that Nino Migliori toured southern Italy: he was rather interested in exploring the way people, objects, and light and shadow come together and interact...
People from Southern Italy by Nino MiglioriFondazione Nino Migliori
...all elements that lend themselves to photographic narration, especially when there dashingly comes out the portraitist’s touch, as is the case with Migliori, who takes delight in playing the role of director, among others.
People from Southern Italy by Nino MiglioriFondazione Nino Migliori
Any face that comes our way—man or woman, young or old, child or grownup—bears a pained expression that you can’t quite make out, whether it is self-directed or whether, by a compensative impulse, it is looking outward as if to engage the beholder with a knowing glance.
People from Southern Italy by Nino MiglioriFondazione Nino Migliori
We see this in people all across southern Italy, guarding the entrance to their shops under a blazing light that parches men and objects alike...
People from Southern Italy by Nino MiglioriFondazione Nino Migliori
...we see it in the butcher, the barber, the baker, the shoemaker, the blacksmith, but also in the peasants as they drive overloaded donkeys plodding wearily along in the dust, and in old women wearing their ethnic costumes.
What most vividly stands out is not so much the faces now carved in wood but the lively gesturing of the hands, which speak an Italic idiom of their own, filled with desperation and resignation.
People from Southern Italy by Nino MiglioriFondazione Nino Migliori
Barile Italian Socialist Party
If I look at an engaging photo like the one where a signboard reading “Barile Italian Socialist Party” cuts across in the background on top, I see something there that takes me to any Italian town.
In this shot of a battered wooden door, opening onto a small room with a few wobbly chairs and some posters, we only find three old men, one engrossed in a newspaper...
...another with drooping head, curved shoulders, the gaunt features of someone whose life was spent laboring, and an unfocused gaze evincing no trace of any thought; and a third one seeming to doze off with his hat pulled down on a wrinkled face.
The blacks are deep and somber, but offset by sparkles of light from a mirror and a ceiling lamp, and by the soul of a few objects lying here and there, with a cocky young revolutionary keeping guard over them. What comes through clearly is that for these old men the horrible emanation of war cannot but outlast the historical defeat: the present is a purgatory and not heaven ever in disguise.
The Hands Speak
This sequence of four photographs titled The hands speak, taken in 1956, represents a group of women chatting in a village in southern Italy.
The Hands Speak
In the well balanced composition the author studies the expressions of their faces, but what interests him most, however, is the gesture of the hands, the unfolding of the storytelling.
He shoots after hours of dialogue, choosing a specific moment.
The Hands Speak
In the last image of the sequence, the women notice that the photographer is shooting and they look at the camera. Migliori doesn’t want to hide his presence, he takes part in the conversation among the three women. A dialogue so intense, so expressive.
The Hands Speak
We Italians have lots of normal habits that foreigners find surprising or inexplicable. Maybe the gesticulation when people speak is the one that arouses the most curiosity. It’s a sign of our constant desire to communicate, to share our feelings with others.
