From Pete Austin, LifeInAbruzzo
The Palazzo de ‘Mayo in Chieti, the Museum of the Carichieti Foundation hosted the 2011 exhibition that this anthology accompanied.
€ 32,00
Pepi Merisio’s L’Abruzzo nell’Italia di ieri is a stunning photobook that plunges you back into Abruzzo and the Italy of yesteryear, the 1960s, a decade after the country’s agrarian reform that finally awarded farmers their own land.
Fifty of the hundred featured photos in this collection were taken in Abruzzo and portray rural and city life in both the mountains and on its Adriatic coastline. The collection of photos reveal just why Pepi Merisio is known as the Caravaggio of Italian photography; not only does he share the painter’s hometown and birthname, but his incredible use of light and shadow mimics this art master.
Each of the black & white and colour images tells a story (personal and collective) that reveal traditions of where landscape and man are inseparable parts of a single great story. Merisio’s photographs of his humble protagonists bring an extraordinary vividness in their portrayal, helping us better understand who we are and what we have become in work, party, faith, face and age.