L'Italia e gli Italiani was a Magnum project commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification, and sponsored by the Intesa San Paolo bank.
Each of the nine photographers invited was given a subject and a list of specific locations to visit. I found my own theme(s) - 'Monuments and Places of Memory, Museums and Piazza's' - rather confusing, and I struggled to understand how these quite distinct subjects linked together.
But after a while I began to understand how I might turn this confusion to my advantage. By sequencing the themes in an apparently random order and making a series of triptychs, diptychs and free-standing single images which linked together visually rather than thematically, a feeling of disorientation emerged which I began to enjoy.
Seen now, in the knowledge that we photographed Italy during the last months of Silvio Berlusconi's third and (probably) final tenure as Prime Minister, and in the darkening mood of the Italian economic crisis, a different - and unexpected - reading of the pictures might now be possible.
