During the 1950s and 1960s, while Italian Neorealists were developing significant new forms of expression in visual art, film and photography, Pietro Donzelli created reportage-style photographic series which are regarded today as some of his most important works. These series document in a highly unique fashion the life and working conditions of a largely rural population. Yet we also find accounts of urban life (as in Napoli, for example), in the typically Italian form it has assumed in the years following the devastation of the Second World War. In his extensive Terra senz'ombra series, comprising photos taken in the Po Valley region during the 1950s, Donzelli captured the remoteness of this landscape and the distance that separates it from all forms of modernity with great immediacy but without sentimentality or lamentation. The photographer: Pietro Donzelli, born in Monte Carlo, 1915-1998. 1931: training as a technical draftsman; from 1939: worked as a photographer (self-taught); from 1947: organised, worked on and contributed to a variety of international photo exhibitions and publications. Bolarfi arte named Donzelli as one of the 20 best Italian photographers in 1976.