The Partisan Resistance Movement in Italy during World War II involved a series of political and military actions, guerilla warfare and a clandestine battle in which men and women of different ideological beliefs and different social strata risked, and often lost, their lives, united by the common cause of liberating Italy from the Nazi-Fascist occupation.

What remains today of this fundamental element of the Italian identity, beyond the pages in history textbooks and the memories of the few surviving witnesses of those terrible days? With the approach of the eightieth anniversary of Italy’s Liberation, the photographers Paolo Cagnacci and Matteo Cesari – who also authored “1:04 a.m.”, a visual history of the bombing at the Georgofili Institute – are joined by the director Theo Putzu in a return to the past, seen through the medium of photography, with the exhibition Avevo Due Paure. Because History is not just what is written in books. History is in the stones, the soil, the eyes of those who remain. The roots of the trees around us are bathed in History and of History we ourselves are made. History speaks to us, and can tell us many things, if we know how to listen.

Avevo Due Paure – the exhibition curated by Paolo Cagnacci and Irene Alison at the Rifugio Digitale gallery – is not only an itinerary of the memory: it also frames issues echoes in current situations and events. It is a voyage in space and time that seeks to give shape and reality to the past but also to preserve what remains, and cultivate a legacy that is still alive and fertile today.