The portrait of Italy through eight stations

Images from the Luce Archive, enriched by photographs from the FS Foundation, are linked to the stories of eight well-known writers to reconstruct, through the privileged point of view of otto Italian railway stations, the history of the country. But there is a figure graceful, graceful and scarlet that hovers, draws trajectories, stitches cities, stations, situations.

The as it was and the as it is

Yes, because if the "how it was" is entrusted to the precious archive material, the "how it is" is offered by the gaze of author of a young photographer, Anna Di Prospero, who has reinterpreted the same railway stations with her shots made specifically for the project, offering a contemporary and, for the first time, feminine reading.

Private memory and public memory

The lightness of the sophisticated and evanescent female figure contrasts with the consistency of word on page. In reviving the memory of the stations of their cities in their stories, some of the greatest contemporary writers compare private and public memory.

The eight writers and the eight cities. Plus one

- Mauro Covacich for Trieste

- Gaia Manzini for Milan

- Tiziano Scarpa for Venice

- Enrico Brizzi for Bologna

- Sandro Veronesi for Florence

- Melania Mazzucco for Rome

- Valeria Parrella for Naples

- Nadia Terranova for Messina

To these is added the contribution of Dario Franceschini , who shares the memory of his Ferrara station.

The point of view - and the fil rouge - female

In selecting the immense Archivio Luce, Chiara Sbarigia, new president of Cinecittà , learned that they did not exist, in the long period of time taken in examination, images made by female photographers. He then decided to make use of the work of a young artist, albeit already established, like Anna Di Prospero, so that through her special objective she would return a necessary also female point of view of the world of stations explored by show.

90 years of station history in a traveling exhibition

The Memory of the Stations exhibits 92 archive images, 20 unpublished images created by Anna Di Prospero and 8 original stories, as well as historical documents and a film containing audiovisual images that tell 90 years of station history. After Rome, the exhibition will travel around the world: first stop Paris in mid-January.