1921 – 2021: a hundred years have passed since the birth of the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, the second largest Italian party from the post-war period up to the 1990s. Born from the splitting of a rib of the socialists during the fateful Congress of Livorno, the PCI has marked not only the history of Italian politics but the history of Italy itself.
On the occasion of this anniversary, the Marsilio publishing house has published a very particular volume of photographs, an “album of the Italian Communists” which focuses attention on the relationship between the party and photography, avoiding easy rhetoric.
A choral story
“Moving and posing”, curated by the author and photographer Marco Delogu and the director of the Gramsci Foundation Francesco Giasi, is a story in images: the narration of the history of the PCI from its origins (with the portraits of Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci at the opening ) until its dissolution (XX Congress, 31 January – 3 February 1991), trying to highlight the distinctive characteristics of the party during its 70 years of life, in Italy and on the international scene.
Almost 200 photos, all in black and white – except very rare color shots – carefully selected from the PCI photographic archive, recently ordered and inventoried, and from numerous public and private archives, Italian and foreign, thus give us back, in addition to the image Party official, even the image of an entire country. Hammer and sickle, red flags, worker, peasant and student demonstrations, but also sectional dances and Unity parties, writers, artists and intellectuals at work, public and private moments of a choral story.
Author shots
Among the selected photographs there are photos captured by the lens of great photographers such as Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Christian Schiefer, David Seymour, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Ferdinando Scianna, Olivo Barbieri, Mimmo Jodice, who now belong to the collective imagery, such as the photo taken by Luigi Ghirri of Berlinguer from behind, at the closing rally of the 1983 Unity Party; or that of Edgardo Antonucci to Nilde Iotti and Alessandro Natta during a session of the Central Committee of the PCI in 1979. Alongside these “author’s shots”, however, there are dozens and dozens of other photos that are virtually unknown to the public and some even unpublished – by Plinio De Martinis, Guido Guidi, Fausto Giaccone, among others – but who have contributed to building the representation of the PCI in the press and in propaganda, which have captured faces and places, symbols, rites, collective dramas and parties, fights and mobilizations of many generations of militants who have succeeded one another and have partly written the history of the Italian twentieth century: from the struggle against fascism, to war, to the Resistance; from the reconstruction, to Togliatti’s party, to relations with the Soviet Union up to the global changes that took place between the 1960s and 1980s and at the end of an era. 2021, created precisely on the occasion of its publication.
The volume is accompanied by a concise but very useful “Chronology” by Maria Luisa Righi and Gregorio Sorgonà, which collects relevant dates and events in the history of the PCI, accompanied by other photos.