Cinque anni a Milano

Title: Cinque anni a Milano

Photographer(s): Uliano Lucas

Writer(s): Franco Ramella, Ermanno Rea

Designer(s): Davide Danti

Publisher(s): Musolini editore, Torino, Italy

Year: 1973

Print run:

Language(s): Italian

Pages: 208

Size: 22×24 cm

Binding: Softcover

Edition:

Print: Litografia STILE, Torino, Italy

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Italy, 1968-1972

ISBN:

In conversation with Uliano Lucas in his studio.

Looking more closely at "Five years in Milan", how did this book come about?

I did it with Tommaso Musolini of Turin, a publisher who was publishing a series of extraordinary books on sociological thought or on Marxist minorities in Europe. I selected three hundred and fifty images from the thousands I took in Milan between 1968 and 1973 in an attempt to tell the story of what this city was, how it had changed in those years and the movements that had taken place, the youth protest and the workers' movements. For me, this work represented a new beginning, an unusual way of photographing. Here I experimented with a different sequence of images, with cuts and shots that were new to me. I was not interested in beautiful photography.

Many photographers will disagree.

I was looking at communication and this passed through intelligent, reasoned and cultured graphics that cut out pieces for a new representation, reasoning about patterns, work that was done with people who were involved in thought and who participated in the political and cultural debate of those years. It was a book with a high print run for that period, and being the first book of its kind published in those years, it became a reference.

Its distribution took place in the circles and in the various movements, many copies I donated to the people who allowed me to make this book and I never looked at profit in what I was doing, I wasn't interested, I was more attracted to the photography of participation and discussion, if you didn't understand the times and rhythms inside the factory you couldn't photograph it.