Turin , the city at work by Vittorio Zumaglino

Turin , the city at work by Vittorio Zumaglino

The theme of work is one of photography's preferred subjects: anonymous authors and famous photographers have in fact defined a visual encyclopaedia of the great urban, industrial and social transformations taking place between the 19th and 20th centuries.

Piedmont also celebrated these themes through the eye of its photographers: among them Vittorio Zumaglino, who recounted with the taste of his time the transformation underwent by Turin and its territory during the twenty-year Fascist period, portraying construction sites, factories, machines and men at work – all symbols of modernity.

The photographs on display go beyond a mere documentation. They reveal Zumaglino's view of the city or the factory understood as living organisms in which each part is in relation to the other: the worker and his work, a passer-by and the city. In this relationship, his eye catches all the traces left by the humanity that has passed through these places, such as the shoes and tools near a manhole that remind us of the presence of a sewage worker inside of it.

Vittorio Zumaglino (Turin 1904 - 1967)

Vittorio Zumaglino, also known as Zuma, was a journalist for daily newspaper 'La Stampa', a sports correspondent and amateur photographer. He later switched to cinema as a producer for Taurus, until its bankruptcy in 1956.

In 1992 his archive of over 28,000 photographs was donated to the National Museum of Cinema by his daughter