Farewell to Paolo Ferrari, dean of Italian photography. Yes is turned off a 86 years old after one long illness the photographer who has told for a lifetime Bologna, city where he died. For a lifetime, Ferrari told the lights and shadows of the Emilian capital, like the day of the massacre of 2 August 1980 at the Bologna station. On the day of the attack, in fact, Ferrari was there, photographing the rubble and the devastation, and in the following days he documented the life of the hospitals besieged by the wounded and unfortunately by the dead. His are some of the most dramatic images after the bomb exploded at the station, as well as the tragic photos of the corpses left on the asphalt by the gang of the Savi brothers. Photographs that document the dramatic reality of the events without indulging in emphasis or in easy compliance with the sensationalist rules of the media. In 2015, Ferrai donated his photographic archive of over 2 million images to Genus Bononiae. Museums in the city of Bologna.
Ferrari was probably the photojournalist who perhaps more than any other was able to tell the history and stories of the city through his camera. Part of his immense photographic archive is now on display at the Oratory of Santa Maria della Vita, one of the venues of the museum circuit, in the exhibition “Criminis Imago. Images of crime in Bologna ”. Active since the seventies as a photojournalist, there is no Bolognese fact that has not been immortalized by his camera, thanks to a device that intercepted calls to the police cars, a trick probably learned during his studies in New York.
“I have a beautiful, lasting memory of Paolo Ferrari: our friendship began in the seventies and then consolidated in the following decades – says the Annual Presidente di Bologna, Fabio Roversi-Monaco. – A great professional, with a deep love for his city, testified by the gift he wanted to make of his Archive to Genus Bononiae, from which the shots that can be admired today in the “Criminis Imago” exhibition in Santa Maria della Vita come from. An initiative that is having great success with the public, testifying to the extraordinary quality of the images. And I am sure that in the future the Ferrari Archive will be able to offer Genus Bononiae material to carry out similar initiatives, capable of offering us renewed views on the history of our city, on its lights and shadows ”he concludes.
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