Andrea Botto: “19.06_26.08.1945”

Andrea Botto (Rapallo, 1973), is an Italian fine-art photographer and lecturer. Interested in the cross-pollination of various contemporary art mediums, he uses photography as a means of dissecting the world in order to express its complexity and to expose its stratifications.

Italy –

“This book was produced in memory of the return journey my grandfather made from the Nazi prisoner-of-war camps between the19^th of June and the 26^th of August 1945, travelling south through Europe from Northern Germany to Tuscany. It is dedicated to all the Italian Military Internees who shared this terrible experience with him.

The images were collected from the Internet in August 2010 by typing the names of the towns they went through and the year, for example “Hanover 1945”, saving the link to the original file. The reproduced colour documents, scale 1:1, are taken from a small notebook that belonged to my grandfather, from his passport and from the letters sent and received by his family during his period of imprisonment.

My grandfather, Primo Benedetti, died on January 27^th 2010, Holocaust Memorial Day.” Photography feature – Andrea Botto