The Italian Cultural Institute of Copenhagen, in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy in Copenhagen, hosted the exhibition “Mondo Piccolo” by photographer Paolo Simonazzi, curated by Andrea Tinterri. The exhibition stems from the eponymous project launched by the photographer from Emilia in 2006 — a journey to rediscover the lands beloved by writer Giovannino Guareschi. These are not merely geographical places, but emotional landscapes — places of the soul. Simonazzi’s photographs succeed in reconstructing a visual world that transcends nostalgic longing for a lost past, offering instead a renewed and autonomous imagination. “Mondo Piccolo” is a tribute that revives and reinterprets a narrative, bringing it into the present with cultural vividness and immediacy. It draws on the stories of men and women who have long inhabited these lands, on the more recent stories of migrants, and on the life of the provinces between Parma, Reggio Emilia and Mantua.
Guareschi’s writing remains in the background, a phantasmagorical presence upon which new iconographic narratives are built. One can sense the echoes of Cesare Zavattini, Bernardo Bertolucci — the poet, but above all the director of 1900 — and perhaps even Luigi Ghirri, in an ideal continuity of photographic perspective, as well as early Nino Migliori and his neorealist digressions. A complex cultural fabric emerges, offering a meaningful subtext for reconstructing the landscape and its history.
In his visual research, Paolo Simonazzi brings to the surface subtle narratives, marginal episodes in which provincial life expresses itself with ironic intelligence. And it matters little whether this is in the Po Valley or elsewhere, because — to quote Gianni Celati: “Well, the provinces are not, first and foremost, a clearly defined place, but a state of mind. Travelling through the provinces — in Europe as in Africa — is a passion in itself”.
