On the Front. Cameramen and Photographers Recount the Great War

One hundred years ago, the Great War hit Europe with its modern notion of war; in addition to deadly weapons it brought the use of new means of communication, like photography and cinema. These were fundamental resources in defining the power balances between the main war-waging countries.

Photographs and shootings taken by photographers or military cameramen were all over the pages of newspapers and magazines and dominated cinema shows around the world, echoed by countless amateur photographs gathered from war veterans and their families, a memory of an extreme and contradictory human and social experience.

The exhibit ON THE FRONT. Cameramen and Photographers Recount the Great War takes you on a visual tour with 160 never-before-seen photographs taken by Luis Bogino following the Royal Italian Army, and soldiers who were also amateur photographers and were stationed across war zones. This part of the display runs in parallel to the photographic one with a selection of non-fiction films shot on and behind the front as well as fiction films from different periods, bearing witness to a visual and cultural heritage interpreted in different ways over time.

Lastly, the gaze of artists like Paola De Pietri, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi offers a personal reading of the First World War, the places it traversed, and an often forgotten memory.