The Urbanization of the Latin Painter Landscape. Postcards of Italian Postwar Modernism by Ulrich Brinkmann, published by DOM Publishers
The development of modernism is easily told through the names of its main protagonists and the cultural centers from which they operated. The history of European everyday modernism from the fifties to the seventies, on the other hand, remains largely unwritten to this day. A mass medium such as the picture postcard provides information about this epoch of a comprehensive economic, social and cultural awakening, which was still widespread on the one hand, but on the other hand was already disappearing: with a postcard, greetings could be sent to friends and relatives, combined with a certain pride in the participation in progress, as depicted in the respective motif.
Exemplary and representative of the photographic reflection of everyday and small-town modernity, this book looks at a part of this serial image production in the hilly heart of Italy. The landscape to the east of Rome between the Aniene and Sacco rivers has been known in this country as a painter landscape since the Romantic era. However, early after the Second World War, photographic postcards of this cultural landscape, which had still been traditional only a few decades ago, depicted a completely different reality: this increasing wiring, networking, and acceleration of life that leads directly to our digitalized present and future.
The book has been published by DOM Publishers and will be presented in Germany for the first time this evening together with a selection of Ulrich Brinkmann’s collection of material.