Thursday October 8 was a mix of sun and cloud with a high of 22C. We headed toward the historic centre walking down one of the main streets in our 'hood toward the Garibaldi bridge. We passed a number of stately homes with lots of foliage.
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| Our walk down Via Nina Bixto |
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| The front view of a very large house |
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| The whole street was interesting |
We crossed the Garibaldi bridge, the one with lots of flower boxes along its route.
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| Alonso |
Our destination was the Dorothea Lange photography exhibit at the International Photography Centre- Scavi Scaligeri.
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| It was tricky finding the gallery- but we eventually did. |
The exhibit is underground in the midst of archaeological excavations. There was an explanation of how renovations in this area of the former Roman Forum and a Scaliger residence resulted in archaeological excavations in the early 1980s. The remains of a Domus built in the second half of the 1st century BC and in use until the 6th century AD was found. There were also remains of residences built by the Della Scala family (the Scaliger period) in the 13th century.
In 1989, works were carried out to secure, arrange and equip the site with systems for preservation. The "Scavi Scaligeri" hosted art exhibits, and then were closed for a while. In 1996, the Scavi were reopened as the International Centre of Photography-Scavi Scaligeri, which was active until 2015. It reopened in 2026, with a new layout of visiter routes and a redesigned exhibition setup.
The exhibition focuses on ten pivotal years of the American photographer Dorothea Lange. Beginning in 1935, together with her husband, the economist Paul S. Taylor, Lange documented the living conditions of migrant farmworkers across large area of the U.S., particularly in California. She was part of a group of photographers in a program know as the Farm Security Administration (FSA), The second major body of work in the exhibition focuses on the Japanese-Americans who were interned in detention camps.
The curators of this exhibit have retained the original captions written by Lange at the time the photographs were made.
Lange was born in Hoboken (New Jersey) in 1895, and developed a passion for photography from a young age. In 1919, she opened her own portrait studio in San Francisco. In the early 1930s she quit the business and began photographing the effects of the economic crisis affecting the country. In 1935, she joined the FSA and took some of her most famous photos for the agency. After documenting the deportation of people of Japanese descent from the Pacific coast in the 1940s, she was forced to slow down her work because of health issues. She died in 1965 of an inoperable cancer, just months before the major exhibition of her works was to open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
All photos are by Dorothea Lange, except where otherwise noted.
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| Photo by Randal Partridge, Dorothea Lange, Resettlement Administration photograph, California 1926 |
The photographs are in small galleries right beside the Roman ruins
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| Traffic on Fifth avenue approaching 57th Street on a summer afternoon, NYC, 1939 |
After a few introductory photographs, the main exhibit was divided into eight sections. Section 1, entitled: In Town, detailed the impact of the economic crisis on urban life during the 1930s.
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| 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, Street hawker selling "Consumer's Bureau Guide, NYC 1939 |
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| Scene along "Skid Row", Howard Street, San Francisco, California, 1937 |
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| Longshoremen's lunch hour. San Francisco waterfront, California 1937. |
Section 2 was entitled: Farm Security Administration. FSA was a U.S. program of research and documentation focussing on the regions devastated from the late 1920s onwards by the economic crisis following the Wall Street Crash, as well as by drought and dust storms. Government official Roy Stryker commissioned some of the leading photographers of the time to record life in these affected areas. As well as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee and Jack Delano were some of the other photographers hired by the FSA. There were a few photos in this exhibit by other FSA photographers.
My cousin, Jack Delano, who after WWII moved to Puerto Rico, had two photographs in this exhibit.
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| Jack Delano (Ukraine 1941- Puerto Rico, 1997), In the home of Steve Dino, Italian FSA client. His mother sells hooked rugs to supplement their farm income. Canterbury, Connecticut 1940. |
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| Jack Delano, Hands of Mr. Henry Brooks, ex-slave, Parks Ferry Road, Greene County, Georgia, 1941. |
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| Russell Lee, Negro mother teaching children numbers and alphabet in home of sharecropper, Transylvania, Louisiana, 1939. |
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| Walking alongside Roman Verona |
Section 3 was entitled: An American Exodus, dealt with the more than 300,000 people that left their homes and land between 1934-1939 due to drought and devastating dust storms, in search of a better future. Lange focused her attention primarily on California, where many migrant farmers found living conditions even worse than those they had left behind.
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| Ronald Partridge, Dorothea Lange with Paul Schuster Taylor, 1930s |
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| Oklahoma dust bowl refugees, San Fernando, California. |
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| Next Time, Try the Train |
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Gas station, Kern County, California, 1938
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| House being moved through the Main Street of town (population 2473). Deposited over Sunday on intersection of U.S. 99. Quiet, rainy afternoon. Cottage Grove, Lane County, Oregon, 1939. |
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| Family walking on highway, five children. Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, 1938. |
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| Reflection of photos in transparent barriers near ruins. |
Section 3 was entitled: Migrant Mothers. This section included arguably Lange's most famous photograph. In a 1960 interview Lange explained how she saw a desperate mother as she had parked her car in a wet and soggy camp. She didn't ask her name or history. The woman was thirty-two and had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds her children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. The protagonist of the shot was later identified as Florence Owens Thompson.
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Migrant Mother, Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age: thirty-two,
Nipomo, California, 1936. |
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Arkansayers auto camp. Ten cabins which rent for ten dollars a month with iron bed and electric light,
one room, Greenfield, Salinas Valley, California, 1939. |
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| Pottery and cooking utensils from the archeological site |
Section 4 was entitled:
Towards the South. From 1937 onward, Lange and Taylor traveled to the Southern U.S. to shed light on the living conditions of labourers working for large landowners.
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| Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. Rough, unfinished timber posts have been used as supports for porch roof. Negro men are sitting on the porch, Gordonton, North Carolina, 1939. |
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| Theatre in Leland, Mississippi, 1937. |
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Advertisement for current movie in town. The child is a flood refugee from southeast Missouri,
Westley, California, 1939. |
Section 5 was entitled:
New Settlements. Due to the work carried out by FSA officials and photographers, the government began to allocate funds to improve migrant farmers' living conditions. New camps with prefabricated housing are built to replace makeshift shantytowns. "Despite these accommodations being anything but comfortable, people's faces seem more relaxed and no longer suffering from hunger".
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| Public library in the piney woods of southwestern Mississippi, 1937. |
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| FSA migratory labour camp, Callipatria, Imperial Valley, California, 1939. |
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| Walking between sections of the exhibit. |
Section 6, the last section of the exhibit was entitled:
I am an American. "Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, on March 18, the following year the U.S. government established the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to oversee the relocation of approximately 110,000 people of Japanese descent to detention camps built in semi-dessert areas inland, away from the Pacific coast. The WRA also created a photographic unit and commissioned Dorothea Lange to document every stage of the operation. Because she and her husband publicly opposed the policy, her work was placed under strict military control; she was forbidden to photograph barbed wire or armed soldiers and was not allowed to keep her negatives. As a result, these photographs remained largely unknown for many years. Lange focussed on children and older people: the former express a distinctly American identity, while the latter wait with quiet dignity and resignation for their uncertain future. Their supposed dangerousness remains entirely unproven".
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Civilian exclusion order number 5, posted at First and Front streets, directing removal by April 7 of persons of Japanese ancestry, from the first San Francisco section to be affected by evacuation.
San Francisco, California, 1942 |
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| A large sign reading "I am An American" placed in the window of a store on December 8, the day after Pearl Harbour. The store was closed following orders to persons of Japanese descent to evacuate from certain West Coast areas. The owner, a University of California graduate, will be housed with hundreds of evacuees in WRA centers for the duration of the war. Oakland, California. 1942 |
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| A soldier and his mother in a strawberry field. The soldier, age 23, volunteered July 10, 1941, and is stationed at Camp Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was furloughed to help his mother and family prepare for their evacuation. He is the youngest of six children. The mother, age 53, came from Japan 37 years ago. Her husband died 21 years ago. This is her youngest son. Her second son is in the army stationed at Fort Bliss. 453 families are to be evacuated from this area. Florin, Sacramento County, California, 1942. |
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| Two children of the Mochida family, who, with their parents, are awaiting evacuation bus. The youngster on the right holds a sandwich given her by one of a group of women who were present from a local Church. The family unit is kept intact during evacuation and at WRA centres where evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed for the duration of war. Hayward, California, 1942 |
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| This assembly centre has been open for two days. Bus-load after bus-load of evacuated persons of Japanese ancestry are arriving on this day after going through the necessary procedures, they are guided to the quarters assigned to them in the barracks. Only one mess had was operating today. Photograph shows line-up of newly arrived evacuees outside this mess hall at noon. The wide road which runs diagonally across the photograph is the former racetrack. San Bruno, California, 1942 |
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| Manzanar Relocation center. Street scene of barrack homes at this WRA Center. The windstorm has subsided and the dust has settled. Manzanar, California, 1942 |
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| Manzanar Relocation Center. Baseball players in a huddle. This game is very popular with 80 teams having been formed to date. Most of the playing is done in the wide firebreak between blocks of barracks, Manzanar, California, 1942 |
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| College students of Japanese ancestry who have been evacuated from Sacramento to the Assembly Center, Sacramento, California, 1942. |
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| Manzanar Relocation Center. Grandfather and grandson of Japanese ancestry at this WRA centre, Manzanar, California, 1942 |
This section was very powerful and resonates with the situation in the U.S. today where people are being picked up by ICE and taken away from their families.
The exhibition was superb. Very well curated and the photographs have a lot of meaning with the social inequality that is very much with us in the present day. Lange's original notes and captions brought an added dimension to the photographs. The location in the middle of ancient Roman ruins added to the experience.
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| Cortile Mercato Vecchio where the gallery is located |
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| Another installation in the Stone Within Verona's Walls exhibit |
We stopped for a late lunch at Antica Bottega Vini, a lovely restaurant in a narrow street. It dates back to the 16th century.
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| Outside Bottega del Vino |
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| Ordering cicchetti--- also fabulous wine selection |
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| We ate outside- excellent cicchetti and a glass of Soave (we are in the Soave wine region) |
We wandered some more and then stopped for a coffee at Caffè Pasticceria Barini another historic building. The business was launched by the Barini family in the early 1970s.
We headed back to the apartment for a salmon dinner cooked by Chef Alonso.
I am falling a bit behind in my blog, but we have been on the go, and need to chill in the evenings.
There is lots to do in Verona, and we are constantly amazed by the architecture, history and location beside the curving Adige River.
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