The exhibition aims to offer the public a synthesis of the variety of industrial production of those years, in which Bologna, starting from the 1950s, lives what is called “a Bolognese economic miracle“, with particular attention to the way of documenting photographically categories of objects and products very distant from each other.
The exhibition itinerary, divided into 10 thematic sections and consisting of 110 photographs (modern prints from digital scans of the original negatives on a glass plate), all coming from the Fototecnica collection – kept in the archive of the Library of San Giorgio in Poggiale – offers a cross-section exhaustive and multifaceted of the productive variety, strong point of the Bolognese area industry: from the mechanical sector to the agri-food, chemical-pharmaceutical and radioelectric sector, from the images of life in the factory to fashion or furnishing-related services.
The Fototecnica fund represents an iconographic source of great importance for the documentation of the economic life of the city of Bologna and the neighboring areas, from the Second World War to the Eighties. Over forty years of photographic shoots accompany the evolution and development of the great mechanical industry, but also of crafts and numerous other business sectors, thus becoming a valuable tool for historical documentation.