Jubilees 2000–2025: From the Sabina Cuneo Archive to the Present

The 50 photographs from the series Roma 1999, on display at the MUCIV-Museum of Civilizations, follow the sequence originally arranged by the photographer Sabina Cuneo and curated by Ludovico Pratesi, with the critical contribution Ennery Taramelli, for the exhibition at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in the summer of 2000.

Born in 1956 in Rome, Sabina Cuneo used photography to document the popular and folk traditions of Southern Italy, with a focus on its ceremonies, rituals, and festivities. From the early 1990s until her premature passing in 2016, she collaborated with her husband, Carmine Puzo, on a body of work that spanned dozens of locations where these festivities took place. For their systemic analysis, grounded in ethnographic and anthropological expertise, they revisited many locations over several years to document enduring traditions as well as the changes in these events. The archive bequeathed to the MUCIV-Museum of Civilizations is one of the most significant of its kind in Italy as well as on an international level. In addition to photographs, it includes extensive accompanying materials − such as notebooks, scientific files, printing proofs and specimens, ethnographic objects collected during field research, and cameras − offering a comprehensive record of their work.

Cuneo used photography not only for ethnographic studies but also to explore a range of realities, approaching them with an eye that was both analytical and experimental − a testament to her remarkable artistic vision. It is in this context that we find Cuneo’s interest in the city of Rome: the reportage on the Jubilee in 2000 is one of her most extensive and complex works, created in collaboration with her husband. This project comprises approximately 1,260 color 135mm. photograms (35 rolls with 36 exposures each) developed from Kodak Gold 100 film and printed at the Rome studio of Graphicolor under the direction of Aldo Bonzi. Dating back to 1999, these images were likely captured using Leica M6 and M4P cameras equipped with 35- or 28-mm lenses.

Exploring the photographer’s archive allows us to trace the intense experimental process that shaped the foundation of her Jubilee series. The large-format images created for the Jubilee were preceded by hundreds of test prints in various dimensions − some mounted on simple white passe-partouts − to assess their visual impact when exhibited. Sequences of the same photographs were printed with noticeable chromatic changes, exploring the serial and aesthetic possibilities within the dominant red-orange tone that characterizes the work’s visual composition. Dozens of images document, as if for a systematic verification, spaces and architectural structures freed from surrounding barriers and scaffolding, restored to their solitary existence.

The photographs of the Jubilee of 2000 are organically linked to another series Cuneo began in the second half of the 1980s, also centered on the city of Rome. Using color film and the same technical means, she produced an extensive sequence of images that often verge on abstraction, capturing the textures of the city’s walls. The roughness of plaster, stones, and bricks, along with faded inscriptions, remnants of billboards and posters, and traces of urban life and decay, are meticulously explored through her lens. The Jubilee works fit within this context. Rather than surveying the city’s panoramas, Cuneo’s eye lingers on the seemingly insignificant details of the urban landscape, where materials, shaped by time, continuously shift in form and color.

On the other hand, Cuneo used black and white and Ilford and Kodak film to produce her series dedicated to statuary in the urban context, particularly that from the Fascist period and especially at the Stadio dei Marmi at the Foro Italico (Marmorei viri, 1997). This experience rests on one of Cuneo’s main interests, initially developed through the exploration of funerary statuary in the monumental cemeteries of Genoa, Milan, Turin and Rome, carried out for her Art History thesis.

Two other black-and-white series were produced by the photographer. The first is dedicated to rigorous abstract explorations of matter and recalls her experimental vocation: a selection of this series was exhibited at the Gallery La mente e l’immagine in Rome (si dice Prologo, Ouverture, Preludio, Incipit…, 1993). The second one comprehends photographs of four festive occasions in different villages in Southern Italy, that underlines a more systematic production. These two series offer evidence of her intense and multifaceted gaze. FA-FF