Gente del Delta 1958

After more than sixty years, a Sunday trip to the delta of the River Po becomes a memorable portrait of poverty-stricken Italy which we have all but forgotten, swept away by the economic boom years and all that ensued. Nino Migliori was not yet a professional photographer, but his unbridled curiosity for places, situations and people was already preeminent. The Po Delta, an outlying area with a level of poverty considered endemic, is captured here in shots that show the uneasy coexistence between man and nature. A key element is the relationship with the river, but what stands out in the photos are the still unpaved roads, the humble, bare interiors and the children who look like miniature adults. A boy on a Vespa offers a harbinger of incipient wellbeing. “Lyrical historical documents,” as Vasco Brondi defines them in his heartfelt introduction. The volume also features critical texts by Corrado Benigni and Mauro Zanchi.