#8 [ENG] Italians Turn Around

A mysterious woman, alone, walks safely before us without looking back. Imagine the sound of her heels on the pavement as it resonates all around, attracting the attention of passers-by.Maria Vittoria Baravelli reveals the background of a photograph so iconic it has become a real manifesto of Italian art over the years.“Not everyone knows that this photograph is just one moment of a wider service, of which we have included the proofs in the exhibition.In 1954 the director of Mondadori’s Bolero Film magazine expressly requested a contribution from De Biasi to attract new readers. The photographer took the assignment very seriously, despite the fact that it was a matter of shooting for a photo story with a discouraging title — Difficile abbordaggio, or Difficult Pick-up. The story tells the adventure of a lonely man wandering around the city centre in search of conquests. Noticing a beautiful girl, so magnetic that she turns the heads of everyone she passes, he follows her on a long walk through Milan, but without managing to approach her.For the female part, a little-known, 20-year-old circus artist was chosen — Moira Orfei. The Italians Turn Around came from one photograph of this sequence. It is De Biasi’s most famous photograph, even if not his favourite.In this photograph the author summarises some symbols of Milan in a single frame: Zucca coffee, a Lambretta and the newspaper La Notte, rolled up in the pocket of the man in the foreground. If at first glance this photo appears related to a machismo that you’d prefer to see archived, when read in the context of the entire sequence it takes on a new meaning. At the end of her stroll, Moira returns to the circus to work as a trapeze artist. She is a free, emancipated, charismatic woman. In fact, we witnessed a change in the perception of a woman in the 1950s: she is no longer simply a mother, daughter or sister, but a well-rounded individual. Milan, once again, was the city in which this social and cultural conquest was affirmed.”