Marco Delogu’s project of photographing shepherds—the first round of which he carried out in 1994, the second in 2007—converges in this show with the historical identity of the building in which it is exhibited. Designed as a fascist “home for youth” by Luigi Moretti, the 1933 building is currently in the midst of a renovation. Its elements are articulate, dynamic, and distinct, yet work harmoniously to create a building that is powerfully seductive from the outside and engaging inside with soft, gentle shapes intersecting rigorous lines (like those of the propeller-shaped stairway dominating the ground floor). Without being overwhelmed by the history they document, the photographs on view explore the areas to the south of Rome affected by the state-enforced shepherd migrations of the 1930s and ’50s and by the evolution that has occurred over the past thirteen years. The fifty-eight works on view are studies in social and geographic identity. Rendered skillfully in black and white and against blurry backgrounds, the shepherds inhabit spaces that seems both temporally and geographically ambiguous, a condition that only accentuates their cultural specificities. Thirteen years ago, the region had seen national migrations of people primarily from the northeast and Sardinia. Now, such influxes are carried out on a more international scale (with people coming mostly from the Balkans and India), reflecting the larger changes Italy—and the rest of the world—has experienced during that time. These remarkable shifts appear leveled or erased in Delogu’s work, or given over to a certain poetry that fuses man with his adopted land, suggesting that society, as it goes global, renders national identity obsolete.
