Lungo le Strade Blu. Along the Blue Highways. Fotografie di Francesco Conversano

From 18 March to 4 October, the Museo di Roma in Trastevere is hosting Lungo le Strade Blu. Along the Blue Highways. Fotografie di Francesco Conversano, an exhibition project by the Italian filmmaker, curated by the Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli.

The exhibition is a journey that invites visitors to explore, understand, and be surprised, moving between geographical dimensions and an anthropological perspective, by the United States, a multifaceted country, suspended between transformations and stereotypes, where collective history intertwines with individual stories.

The artist’s gaze focuses on large cities, suburbs and small towns — revealing connections, loneliness and distances, and highlighting the profound relationship between people through the power of memory and poetic sensibility. From this perspective, the Cinema of the Real merges with the cinema of memory and poetry, exploring spaces between reality and imagination.

The exhibition, enriched by ten podcasts narrated by Francesco Conversano, features ninety colour and black-and-white photographs taken in the United States between 1999 and 2017. They were captured during documentary productions with RAI Cinema. Along America’s ‘blue roads’, amidst reality, memory and poetry, places and stories emerge on a journey that evokes the voices and images of American culture: from Walt Whitman to Edgar Lee Masters; from John Steinbeck to Raymond Carver and Truman Capote; from Joe R. Lansdale to Barry Gifford; from Edward Hopper to Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Besides, there are references to the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, whilst cinema echoes in the dreamlike visions of David Lynch and in Peter Bogdanovich’s recollections of places and stories, evoking the intense synthesis of The Last Picture Show.

Lungo le Strade Blu/Along the Blue Highways, promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale – Sovrintendenza Capitolina, is curated by the Massimo and Sonia Cirulli Foundation in collaboration with the Sovrintendenza Capitolina, Museum Services by Zètema Progetto Cultura.

Photo: Wyoming State Sign, Wyoming 2003