Across Italy. Photographs by Pepi Merisio

A journey through images that crosses Italy from the economic boom to the 1980s: this is the heart of the exhibition ‘Attraverso l'Italia. Fotografie di Pepi Merisio’ (Through Italy. Photographs by Pepi Merisio), which will open on 6 June 2025 at the Sestini Photography Museum, in the evocative spaces of the Convent of San Francesco in Bergamo. The event, supported by SIAD Fondazione Sestini, is the result of a collaboration between the Museum of the History of Bergamo, the Italian Touring Club and the Sestini Foundation, which has been the custodian of Pepi Merisio's precious photographic archive since 2018.

With around 140 black and white and colour photographs, the exhibition aims to show the general public Merisio's commitment to documenting the Italian regions, recalling, among other things, his long collaboration with the Italian Touring Club in the famous series “Attraverso l'Italia” (Across Italy), published between 1956 and 1972.

It is an opportunity to reflect on the transformations of the Italian landscape, in its natural, anthropised and human forms, during and after the years of the economic miracle. From life in the Alps to the Florio tuna fishery in Favignana, from the Sacred Mountains of Piedmont to the procession of the Turchini in Procida, each photograph is a testimony to a changing Italy, recounted with delicate intensity.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published by Lyasis Edizioni, which contains all the images on display, enriched by an introductory critical essay by Denis Curti and an in-depth study dedicated to the Pepi Merisio collection, which became part of the Sestini Photographic Archive in 2018 (archivio.museodellestorie.bergamo.it).