Location: ITALIA

In Italy, 1968 (Il Sessantotto) is not just another calendar year but a season of dramatic changes. Inspired by the global uprisings happening in the 60s, and motivated by a dissatisfaction with the changes and contradictions of Italian society during those years, “Il Sessantotto” opens a new era for political and social demands, starting with the student and worker movements, and later expanding to the broader segments of civil society. It is “a long march through the institutions” that transforms the image of

Italian society, contributing to fundamental achievements in terms of civil and human rights such the new family law, workers’ protections, laws on conscientious objection to military service, divorce, abortion rights, and the closure of insane asylums.

In his photographs, Uliano Lucas tells the story of this long Italian 1968. Lucas becomes the interpreter of the enthusiasm and rage that sweeps through the students and workers’ protests from 1967 to 1969; he documents the tragic watershed moment of the Piazza Fontana massacre, follows the expansion and diversification of the anti-authoritarian movement in its struggles for civil rights and housing, the birth of the Italian feminist movement, the ideals of “Thirld Worldism” and the fights against “total institutions”.

Today, his images become the memory of a hopeful era, suffocated by the strategy of tension and terrorism, but which nevertheless delivers to the 1980s a changed nation, to which the battles of hundreds of thousands of citizens, in schools, at universities, and workplaces, guaranteed new rights and a more open and free society.

ABOUT ULIANO LUCAS

Uliano Lucas, born in Milan in 1942, is an independent photojournalist who has chronicled through his images the social, political, and cultural transformations that defined the last five decades of history. The breadth of subjects covered over his career spans from Italy’s economic boom to migration flows in the 60s and 00s, from changes in the labor market to the destruction of the land, and from decolonization movements in Africa to the siege of Sarajevo.

His more recent books include “Una storia di accoglienza” (2017), “Sognatori e ribelli. Fotografie e pensieri oltre il Sessantotto” (2018), “Revoluções: Guiné- Bissau, Angola e Portugal 1969-1974” (2023), and with Tatiana Agliani “La realtà e lo sguardo – Storia del fotogiornalismo in Italia” (2015) and “A passo lento nella realtà”(2024).