Paisan, ciao

During the 1960s, Giuseppe Morandi photographed and filmed the final rites of the so-called paisan, field hands and farm workers in Piadena, Bassa Pada, province of Cremona. Together with Gianfranco Micio Azzali, a bergamino, a dairy cow farm hand, he founded the Lega di Cultura in Piadena. Their idea was to collect the stories and conserve the memory of this worker community. Thanks to this collection and with the support of the Società di Mutuo Soccorso SOMS 1908 [Mutual Aid Society] of Torre De’ Picenardi and the Associazione mantovana eQual, the stories of the paisan are relived in the places where they once took place, for example, in the form of class identity and cultural resistance.