The Italians by Bruno Barbey

In the early 1960s, while at university in Vevey, Switzerland, Bruno Barbey decided to launch into a photographic exploration of neighboring Italy. Inspired by Robert Frank’s The Americans, and René Burri’s Les Allemands (The Germans), Barbey’s idea for his own book, The Italians, quickly emerged.

“I lived a few hours from Milan, even behind the wheel of an old Volkswagen,” he wrote in the introduction to his book, published four decades later in 2002. “As a 20-year-old, it’s easy to be seduced by the art of living, the conviviality, the extraordinary generosity found on the peninsula.”

Crisscrossing Italy from north to south, Barbey set out to “capture the spirit of the nation.” In four years, he traveled from Milan to Sicily. “For me, Italy in the early 1960s was also the Italy of neorealism, the Italy of Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, and Pasolini. I was drawn to Italian cinema, and this fascination unconsciously prompted me to capture some of these familiar figures in their everyday settings—ragazzi, nuns, aristocrats, carabinieri, priests, beggars, prostitutes, and old mafiosi—all characters in a modern commedia dell’arte.”

Barbey finished the series in 1964.  A year later, he joined Magnum Photos. “I entered into the whirlwind that is photojournalism,” he explained. “From Biafra to Vietnam, the Middle East to Poland, Chile to Japan, and the years passed, many years passed.”

The Italians was finally published in 2002. “Over the years, these photographs have become imbued with stories, probably nostalgia, and even a mythology that was not necessarily apparent at the time—the Fiat 500 was something else! Time, it seems to me, has given these Italians, their faces, and their expressions, a little extra soul,” he wrote.

Barbey’s Les Italiens is currently on view at the Palazzo Barolo in Turin, Italy until January 11, 2026. Plan your visit here.