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A vibrant visual journey through Italy from 1978 to 1986, Jörg Rubbert’s analog photographs capture everyday life across Italian cities and the countryside with empathy and authenticity. Using classic Kodachrome film, Rubbert documents scenes in Florence, Venice, Pisa, Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Elba, and the Italian Riviera. His candid street photography focuses on ordinary people—retirees, children, nuns, workers—presenting evocative snapshots of a society on the cusp of change. Inspired by Italian neorealist cinema and the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, these images reflect both nostalgia and transformation, revealing the spirit of “la dolce vita” amid shifting social realities. Timeless, unmanipulated, and deeply human, this collection offers an intimate time capsule of Italy’s urban and rural life, seen through the lens of a curious outsider.
(…) He rediscovers in his images the analog, slow-paced world, the changed relationship with the factor of time, people in their growing dependence on modern media. (…) Jörg Rubbert’s Italy book exerts a fascination on the viewer, at least on anyone who has ever visited this country with love and affection. And what certainly holds true for the book is that images can mature over decades.
– Juergen Buergin, A visual zine
The documentary perspective is reminiscent of the visual language of Italian neorealism.
– Sarah Alexandra Fechler, Photoscala
In his volume ITALY – Street Photographs 1978–1986 he captures with analog precision and summery lightness a world that seems long gone and yet still lives on in our hearts. (…) What distinguishes the pictures is not just the subtle documentary eye, but also the sensual immersion into a slower-paced way of life.
Rubbert does not photograph with distance, but with sympathy – with a heart that beats for Italy.
– Dragana Mimic, Photo Klassik
Perhaps it is precisely… this relatively tightly defined time frame that intensifies the mood of those years and lets us see their supposed lightness and carefree nature in the images. The ‘feel-good pictures’ confront us with the provocative thesis that maybe not everything was worse in the past. – Martin Breutmann, fotoforum
Above all, it is unspectacular scenes, captured from Rubbert’s personal subjective perspective without staging. Scenes taken from everyday life, genuine and thus authentic. (…) On the streets, what interests Rubbert happens: the everyday life of people. In keeping with Pasolini’s works and films, he sympathizes with the so-called ordinary people and their economically difficult circumstances.
– Kirstin Rappmund, ProfiFoto
Preface 6
ITALY 1978 – 1986: A Photographic Approach 14
Italy in the Late 70s and Early 80s: A Description of Condition 18
The Peak Phase of Extremist Terror 18
On the Trail of Pasolini’s Italy 26
A Parallel to Pasolini’s Criticism of Civilization 30
Photographer’s Note 34
Plates 45
Urban Italy 46
Florence 47
Pisa 83
Venice 97
Rural Italy 122
ELBA 123
Sicily 141
Puglia / Calabria / Campania 153
Liguria – The Riviera di Ponente 167
Making of 178
Biography 180
Exhibitions and Publications 182
Endnotes 188
Acknowledgements 190
Imprint