On the centenary of Paolo Di Paolo’s birth (1925–2023), Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, in collaboration with Marsilio Arte, presents a retrospective dedicated to one of the great masters of 20th-century Italian photography. The exhibition PAOLO DI PAOLO. Rediscovered Photographs, curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Silvia Di Paolo, will run from October 23, 2025, to April 6, 2026, and brings back to the public eye the forgotten work of an artist who was able to portray, with delicacy and depth, the Italy of the postwar rebirth.

More than 300 photographs — many of them previously unpublished and, for the first time, also in color — along with archival materials, vintage magazines, and original documents, form a journey through Di Paolo’s entire artistic career, from his beginnings in 1953 to his intense collaborations with the leading publications of the time. The exhibition also features a special, previously unseen focus on Genoa and Liguria, regions often captured through the photographer’s elegant and poetic lens, before he abruptly left the scene in 1969 due to a deep personal and professional crisis.

Di Paolo was the favorite photographer of Mario Pannunzio, the legendary editor of the weekly Il Mondo, where he published 573 photographs over 14 years, and he was a regular contributor to the magazine Tempo. Through his reportages, he portrayed Italy and the world, documenting social changes, everyday people, and iconic figures: from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Anna Magnani, from Lucio Fontana to Giorgio de Chirico, from Sophia Loren to Marcello Mastroianni. His style, marked by a participatory yet never intrusive gaze, captured the soul of the country during a pivotal moment in its history.

After his withdrawal from photography, his entire archive — over 200,000 negatives — remained forgotten for fifty years, until his daughter Silvia rediscovered it and returned it to the history of Italian photography. To mark the occasion of the exhibition, Marsilio Editori is publishing the novel Solo per te by Silvia Di Paolo with Antonio Leotti — an intense and personal account inspired by the extraordinary rediscovery of Di Paolo’s archive, telling the story of the photographer for the first time by weaving together family history, art, and reflections on memory.