Images by Gabriele Basilico, Olivo Barbieri, Luigi Ghirri, Joel Meyerowitz, Martin Parr and Gianni Berengo Gardin interpret milanesità (the quality of being Milanese) as a metropolitan identity, giving their own personal viewpoint of the adjective, according to how they see the city.

The Contrasto archive matches the sensitivity of famous names in photography with other younger artists in a sequence of photographs by authors such as Giancolombo, Federico Garolla, Gianni Berengo Gardin and Daniele Dainelli.

Suggestive urban atmospheres are captured in images from the archives of the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera: instant and engaging shots of a black & white Milan that seems so far from us and yet so familiar in these photographs from the chronicles of the newspaper’s historical archive, conserved at the Corriere della Sera Foundation.

And finally the ATM archive, a series of historical photographs taken from the end of the nineteenth century through to the early 70s: this archive gives and account of the company and its close relationship with the city, the means of transport used, the personnel working for the company, the city’s quarters and the urban landscape.

The exhibition is articulated therefore in four sections, one for each archive, which unwinds from a principal section drawn from the AEM archive in the Sala delle Colonne and continues through the other rooms, tracing its narrative course which, without seeking a chronological order, investigates the daily life of Milan past and present.

Integrating these four archives, despite their differences, responds to a simple necessity: the crowded streets of the past are the mental key to accessing the places of the present. The curious eye that investigates day to day life will finally be able to dwell on these professional photographs presented by Contrasto, admire the historical images from ATM or enjoy photographs of day to day events commissioned by the Corriere della Sera (Denis Curti).