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The show
The significant moments of the Great War , the front line and above all the daily life in the rear, are the protagonists of the photographic exhibition "Images from the front" presented at the Luciana Matalon Foundation in Milan in collaboration with the Cesare Pozzo Foundation for mutuality from 3 to 29 May 2022.
A wide selection of over 120 unpublished photographs belonging to a photographic collection owned by the Cesare Pozzo Transport and Mutuality Library is exhibited for the first time and documents not only a historical moment of crucial importance and, today, of compelling relevance, but also the birth in Italy of a photographic genre: that of photojournalism .
The exhibition is designed to make the photographic heritage of the Cesare Pozzo Library as accessible as possible so that the public can fully appreciate the extent of historical testimony : for this reason, of the 121 shots, a large part is exhibited in the original, the other photographs they are reproduced in enlargements which, on the one hand, make the details more legible, on the other, they avoid the wear of the fragile original prints, in balance between enhancement and conservation.
The choice of the temporal definition - the Great War 1914-1918 - as well as that of the set-up and the thematic distribution denote the will, on the part of the curators Eleonora Belloni and Alessandra P. Giordano, to avoid any attribution of "our" war: in fact despite the fact that the photos largely portray war land on the Italian front, what is being told is not an Italian war, but the Great War , the first, and unfortunately not least, global and all-encompassing conflict of a "short century" that saw humanity engaged more in destroying than building.
The photos in the exhibition are divided into three thematic sections : “The first line”, “The front”, “Beyond the borders”. To these is added a section of photos by the “official” photographer of the Great War, Luca Comerio . A focus is also dedicated to the theme of transport with some images of the trains used in the conduct of materials and, sometimes, of the fallen.
The authorship of the images, to which it was possible to trace thanks to the stamps on the back of the photographs, largely refers to the photographic and cinematographic sections of the Royal Italian Army and the Supreme Command, but there are also images taken by private photographic laboratories.
The entire photographic corpus revolves around two major themes: on the one hand the war fought on the front line , on the other the everyday life at the front . Attack positions and advanced resistance lines, lookouts and prisoners, shelters, trenches, moments of action that alternate with moments of waiting; and then, the "after", the destruction left by the conflict, the ruins, what remains of cities and production plants after the war has exercised all its destructive force.
There is also a small nucleus of images dedicated to the material instruments of war, weapons and ammunition, to remember how the First World War was also the first war that took advantage of largely new techniques and technologies, the result of about a century of technological development. and industrial that had invested the entire Western world. It was precisely these warfare capabilities, together with that of mobilizing men and resources, that would direct the fate of the conflict by helping to redesign the new world order.
Then, everyday life marked by official visits, gatherings, distribution of gifts, but also more "private" moments : grooming, ration hour, writing letters at home, participation in a religious service.
"The two themes - tell the curators - are intertwined until they are often aligned on an almost imperceptible border: the concept of the front line, a city destroyed by bombing, a woman digging a trench in the mud, are all effects of a war, like a body of artillery in action, the "before" and the "after" are nothing but faces of that same capacity that a conflict has to produce destruction, death, lacerations and rubble ».
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