Carlo Riccardi's images document female emancipation through the daily life of work, offering us a social cross-section of women grappling with various jobs during and after the war period: peasant women, workers, paratroopers, tire dealers, petrol station attendants and taxi drivers. Work faced with a smile, women with multiple roles, mothers sometimes fathers, who face the changes present in the most diverse sectors of daily life.
To accompany the photos of Carlo Riccardi, the most recent shots of his son Maurizio are added, updating and placing a sort of method of comparison on the history of working women. So women-policemen, women-magistrates, lawyers, graphic designers, archaeologists, waste collectors and orchestra directors…. all within Maurizio Riccardi's lens, to pay homage to the female universe, to those women who live their profession with joy and effort, far from the now very topical velinism and the desire to "appear" at any cost.
To complete this project, given Maurizio Riccardi's frequent international travels, we wanted to use a final juxtaposition with several shots taken in Ethiopia, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo: the female workers of these three states, in their colors and humility, with their gaze fixed on the camera, they embrace and summarize the desire for that human as well as social redemption, breaking down national borders and underlining the importance of the role of women in modern society from a universal perspective.
Carlo Riccardi (1926) is the first paparazzi of the "Dolce Vita". A friend of Ennio Flaiano, Federico Fellini and Totò, he has collected seventy years of Italian history in a large archive. His shots are exhibited in permanent exhibitions in Beijing, Rome and St. Petersburg. In the fifties he founded the magazine «Vip» and worked for «Il Giornale d'Italia» and «Il Tempo». He documented six papal elections and recently published the photographic book Sophia Loren – Se mi dice bene (Armando, 2014) in homage to the 80th birthday of the great actress.
Maurizio Riccardi (1960) photographer, is director of the photographic documentation agency Agr. He directs the Riccardi Archive and operates on the whole sphere of multimedia communication. Among his exhibitions "Vita da Strega", on the history of the most important Italian literary prize, and "The Holy Popes". He has published numerous monographic books including I tanti Pasolini (Armando, 2015) and Gli anni d'oro of the Premio Strega (Ponte Sisto, 2016). In 2011 he gave life to the Spazio5 gallery, becoming a cultural reference point in Rome in just a few years.
The Riccardi Photographic Archive, registered with the Lazio Archival Superintendency in Rome as a Heritage of National Interest, is made up of over one million original negatives, which portray as many more or less well-known moments of political, social and customary life that have characterized the last seventy years of Italian history.
The exhibition, curated by Giovanni Currado and Marino Paoloni for the Riccardi Archive in collaboration with the Istituto Quinta Dimensione and the AGR Photographic Documentation Agency, is promoted by Roma Capitale - Department of Cultural Growth - Department of Cultural Activities in collaboration with Zètema Progetto Cultura.
