Curated by Damiano Robbiani

Palazzo Reali hosts a monograph dedicated to the Ticino-born photographer Vincenzo Vicari, who worked in Lugano between 1936 and 1987. Ticino in the Tide of Change chronologically documents the transformation of the region and its inhabitants from the rural, post-war years to the urbanized Ticino of the 1980s. It is comprised of over one hundred selected black-and-white and colour photographs. Vicari documented Ticino, from picture-postcard views to more unexpected ones. His eye never sought to enhance or beautify, but to record the world around him with assurance, occasionally with a glint of irony shining through. While Vicari’s Ticino may not be the idyllic one of literary figures such as Francesco Chiesa, Guido Calgari and Giuseppe Zoppi, or the ideological one of spiritual Defense and tourist tracts, neither it is limited to the Ticino of technical progress and economic success. The importance of Vicari’s work lies in his ability to capture and summarize the complexity of a place seeking its identity in a way that is always original.