Annabella Rossi. La poetica della realtà - The Poetics of Reality

The new exhibition at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere is organised by Roma Capitale, Department of Culture and the Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with MuCiv - Museo delle Civiltà. It explores the work of Annabella Rossi, a leading figure in ethnography and anthropology in the second half of the 20th century, who transformed photography and video into tools for scientific and social research.

The exhibition begins with the study of tarantism during the 1959 expedition to Salento led by the renowned anthropologist and philosopher Ernesto de Martino, of whom Annabella Rossi had been a student and later a collaborator, and moves on to the major studies conducted in Southern Italy focusing on popular religiosity and traditional festivals. One example is the extensive research on Carnival conducted between 1972 and 1976 together with students from her Cultural Anthropology course at the University of Salerno and the theatre director and musicologist Roberto De Simone. With the same intensity, Annabella Rossi’s gaze also turns to the outskirts of Rome in the late 1950s and to daily life in Trastevere.

The photographs on display, many of which have never been seen before, document aspects of marginalised and working-class cultures, exposing the stigma of poverty in an Italy left behind by the economic boom and restoring dignity to a people marked by hardship yet illuminated by a profound innocence. To enrich the sensory experience, the exhibition features the photorhythmic film “Serenata d’arte varia” by Francesco De Melis: a musical setting for voice and piano of the scholar’s street sequences, which transforms the static image into a vital flow.

Cover photo: Lombardia, Val Camonica, Roccia di Naquane