Breeders, shepherds, farmers and woodcutters in Val di Fiemme. Rural snapshots from the past

From 17.00 on 14 July, the day of its opening, it will be possible to visit an exhibition in the elegant rooms of the Palazzo della Magnifica Comunità, in Cavalese. One of its objectives is to recount, through numerous images, the deep and ancient bond that the people of Val di Fiemme have with their territory. A relationship that the exhibition also aims to strengthen and renew through the active involvement of the visitor. Residents and tourists are thus called upon to provide information, such as indications on the locations where the shots were taken, or curious facts linked to the places and activities immortalised, or even to leave a personal memory that has resurfaced thanks to the powerful evocative power of the many black and white landscape views.

The temporary exhibition "Breeders, Shepherds, Farmers and Woodcutters of Val di Fiemme. Rural snapshots from the past" aims to highlight the important photographic heritage preserved in the Historical Archive, showing the public some unpublished shots taken between the end of the 19th century and the 1960s.

Among the thousands of images in the archive, the portraits taken by professional photographers of the time stand out, such as  Giovanni Battista Unterveger from Trento and Mario Bragagna and Francesco March from Val di Fiemme. The photos taken by the the Forestry Economer of the time, Guido Koch, are of a more technical nature and of great silvicultural interest.

However, most of the photographs on display, which entered the organisation's archives at different times and in different ways, are by an anonymous author.

The exhibition of photos, in original format and by means of enlargements, thus highlights a social reality that has almost disappeared. An image that stands out from the now century-old romantic repertoire of mountaineering epics and the sometimes folkloristic one of certain tourist postcards.

In fact, the exhibition illustrates a minor rural reality of the valley, unknown to the tourist and barely overlooked by the hiker, where daily life depended on the patient, rigorous and laborious carrying out of an agricultural technology that was sometimes archaic and very poor, but nevertheless ingenious, articulate and versatile.

The photographic documentation is exhibited in conjunction in the last section with some paintings by artist Enrico Clauser from Cavalese (1883-1928), and with various ethnographic objects: vivid, yet distant, testimony to a cultural landscape that has remained unchanged for centuries.

Exhibition curated by Roberto Daprà, Tommaso Dossi, Alice Zottele

With the collaboration of Giada Paluselli