The volume consists of a wide selection of photographs that Frank Cancian, a young American researcher at the time, who later became one of the world’s leading anthropologists, took in 1957 in Lacedonia. Cancian had arrived in this small town in Southern Italy as a Fulbright scholar, to document daily life in all its aspects: work in the countryside, “strolling” in the square, popular and religious traditions.
Cancian's, emeritus professor of Anthropology at the University of Irvine, California, is unanimously considered an extraordinary community study through photography: one of the most relevant fruits of the commitment of American social sciences in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s.
The book was published, in Italian and English editions, on the occasion of the exhibition Un Paese del Mezzogiorno italiano. Lacedonia (1957) nelle fotografie di Frank Cancian, curated by Francesco Faeta at the Museo delle Civiltà, Rome, from October to December 2020.
Frank Cancian
(1934-2020) Photographer by passion, anthropologist by profession, he arrives in Italy, in Lacedonia (AV), in 1957, after having won a Fullbright scholarship as an anthropology student. It is in the town of Irpinia that in seven months he immortalizes the society of the time, the habits and customs of a significant historical period: the second post-war period in the inland towns of southern Italy. In his films, the 1801 shots represent stories of ordinary everyday life, of which Cancian seeks the "exotic", the particular in normal situations. Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Irvine, California, he has studied the Californian, Mexican and Italian communities, of which Lacedonia is the emblem.
Zazà - Meridione cultura società, Rai Radio 3, 14/11/2021
Fotografia: Frank Cancian
Claudia Stritof, Phocus Magazine, 14/07/2021
Frank Cancian: la bellezza dell’ordinario in un paese del Mezzogiorno italiano
Laura Leonelli, Il Sole 24 Ore | Domenica, 07/02/2021
Cancian e l'autenticità del Sud
Frank Cancian
Arturo Zavattini
Marialba Russo
Arturo Zavattini
Emiliano Mancuso
Luciano D'Alessandro
Martino Marangoni
Marialba Russo
Franco Zecchin
Sandro Becchetti
Francesco Zizola
Sandro Becchetti
