Five Journeys (1990-98)

Between 1990 and 1998, Guido Guidi made five separate trips to Milan and its surroundings. Cinque viaggi brings together the photographs taken there, forming an investigation into a city and its peripheries in full mutation economic and social. While Guidi follows the canal from the suburbs to the downtown, his attention and visual language shift from the vernacular to the metropolitan, from wider horizontal views to vertical “cuts” in the urban fabric, entire buildings and scenes with glimpsed facades. and the doors. On the way, we also meet some locals: a group of young men gathered in a Pasolini-style scene on a bridge on the outskirts of the city; casual passers-by working, shopping or stopping to smoke in the city streets; disconnected couples and disparate individuals whose loose citizenship is consistent with urban sprawl. While previous books, such as Per Strada (2018) and Tra l'altro (2020), demonstrated Guidi's fascination with rural landscapes and small towns of his native region, Cinque viaggi turns to Italy metropolitan, documenting the dramatic socio-economic changes that transformed it during the 19th and 20th centuries. The remains of the Rural civilization and traces of urban expansion are among the first signs of deindustrialization. These 110 large-format works, including many have never been seen before, revealing layers of history social and architectural spaces among which daily life takes place. Cinque viaggi offers a strikingly subtle picture of Italy's recent past and ruminations on his future. With essays by Corrado Benigni, Antonello Frongia and Roberta Valtorta.