Curated by Valentina Bruschi

Photographs by Melo Minnella

Text Laura Barreca, Valentina Bruschi, Maria Chiara Di Trapani, Mariaenza Puccia, Roberto Salvaggio, Giuliano Sergio, Maria Rosa Sossai, Midge Wattles

Translations Dominic McElwee 

Book design Michela Palermo

60 pages, 30 photographs

Hand bound, 20.5 x 29 cm 

ISBN 978-88-947117-1-4

"Gently, nostalgically and with sincere curiosity, his photographer’s eye surveys artisans’ virtuosity or children’s games, pensioners’ conversations in piazzas, village festivals or work in the fields, not only in Sicily but in manifold places across various continent.(...)All these images are marked by what the anthropologist Antonino Buttitta defines as Melo Minnella’s ability to capture the ‘magical’ element hidden in everyday details, that invisible bond that unites humanity, nature and history." Valentina Bruschi, Head of Exhibitions and Research, Museo Civico di Castelbuono

"Minnella’s works need to be evaluated in the context of the great media narrative of postwar Italy: a society that was measuring itself against a modernisation that was in many respects alien and overwhelming. (...)Today the crisis of globalisation and its ideology yields an understanding of how those traditions, distorted but still embedded in our deeds and habits, could provide us with unforeseen keys to facing the challenges of our contemporary reality. It is in this that the virtues of Melo Minnella’s images are borne out, especially when gathered in a museum, understood as a place where a community can reconceive its native identity." Giuliano Sergio, Art Critic and Professor Accademia di Belle Arti, Venezia

A winning project of Strategia Fotografia 2022, promoted by the Ministry of Culture’s Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity