Meriggiare pallido e assorto Eugenio Montale: 100 immagini per i 100 anni di Ossi di seppia

The volume accompanies the exhibition of the same name presented at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa from 13 May to 29 June 2025, to mark the centenary of Eugenio Montale’s collection of poems Ossi di seppia.
Three photographers have accepted the challenge of ‘engaging’ with the Ligurian poet’s work by training their viewfinders on his places, real and lyrical. Iole Carollo, Anna Positano and Delfino Sisto Legnani present three visual reinterpretations of Montale’s poems that diverge in vocabulary, approach and sensibility. The result is a photographic meditation between fidelity and interpretation, present and memory, real and inner landscapes.

The book and the exhibition seek to explore the relationship between poetry and image. A reflection on the reciprocity of the two arts as well as their independence, which raises deep-rooted but still relevant questions about the concepts of description, interpretation and illustration in the comparison between the verbal and the visual.

The essays by Marcello Ciccuto and Elio Grazioli present an account of Montale’s gaze and his problematic relationship with photography, as well as the resonances between his poetry and landscape. While Montale distrusted photography understood as mere reproduction, his compositions are pervaded by powerful, synthetic, essential images. This aesthetic today finds new interlocutors in the gaze of the three photographers.