"A self-taught photographer, Paolo Monti became the great documenter of post-war Italy, from the elegiac decline of Venice to the abstract geometry of Milan" - Joe Lloyd

"Between the end of World War II in 1945 and the economic boom of the 1960s, Italy underwent enormous political and social transformation. The defeat of fascism necessitated physical reconstruction of the war-torn country as well as a reunification of the national psyche. Photographers responded to the postwar condition by creating images that dealt directly with the realities of everyday life. The resulting photographs from this period have often been categorized as "neorealist" (after the contemporaneous movement in Italian cinema) or "humanist" in the vein of social documentary photography, such as that produced during the Great Depression in the United States. However, photography in postwar Italy encompassed a broader range of motivations and styles." - Paolo Monti, Metropolitan Museum, New York.