‘Vite di corsa’, in Val di Sole the bicycle told by Magnum photographers

Cycling as a great collective ritual, made up of sport, passion but above all humanity. Men who grind kilometers, first of all measuring themselves, but also an audience that ‘lives’ on the side of the roads waiting for the ‘passage’ of the champions and identifies with them. The exhibition “Vite di corsa. Magnum’s bicycle and photographers. From Robert Capa to Alex Majoli “, curated by Marco Minuz, just inaugurated in the ancient Castle of Caldes, in Val di Sole, open to the public until September 26, 2021. About 80 images, many of which never exhibited to the public, which tell the epics of champions and major international events, Tour de France in primis, “through the gaze and lens of great photographers – the curator Marco Minuz tells Adnkronos – who manage to capture the magic of this sport in their shots, so strongly lived and participated by those who love it. Such a popular and democratic sport, the only one in which you don’t pay a ticket, therefore for the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, all united on the roadsides to scream or wait. Because after all – Minuz reflects – for the public cycling is a sport of waiting, the passage lasts a few seconds, but one also waits a whole day to experience that moment. It is a collective rite narrated by great masters through their sensitivity: the result is a non-canonical or standardized story but out of the box, even unsettling “. The images of exhausted men, who literally collapse on the asphalt or on the newly passed pavé, are striking. the finish line, the emotional participation of their supporters, the indifferent serenity of a herd that continues to graze while humans seem to go mad for their champion’s feat. The exhibition opens with a little-known series of photographs taken by Robert Capa in 1939 when he was commissioned by the magazine “Match” to follow that year’s Tour de France. Photographs where the focus is mainly on the participation of the public in the race, capturing gazes and compositional equilibrium. Another series of photos taken by Guy Le Querrec ‘tells’ the 1954 Tour de France; at the time the photographer was only 13 years old and was in Brittany to spend the summer holidays and where, in that edition, the famous cycling race passed. About 30 years later, in 1985, the photographer was invited to follow the Renault-Elf cycling team during winter training; this season he took pictures of champion Laurent Fignon and followed the cyclocross championship. The journey continues with Christopher Anderson’s iconic photographs dedicated to cyclist Lance Amstrong in 2004 which suggest the sad end of the career of this doping athlete.A section is entirely dedicated to spectators with their rituals with photos of Mark Power, Robert Capa, Harry Gruyaert and Richard Kalvar. The photographs dedicated to the famous Milanese bike manufacturer Alberto Masi, based in his laboratory under the curves of the Vigorelli Velodrome, are instead by the Italian photographer Alex Majoli. Finally, a selection of images by Peter Marlow dedicated to fragments of everyday life of the runners engaged in the tour of Brittany in 2003. Promoting the exhibition, organized by the company Suasez, is the Val di Sole tourism company, in collaboration with the Castle of the Buonconsiglio, provincial monuments and collections and the Municipality of Caldes. “It is a decidedly sui generis exhibition, a real challenge – underlines Minuz – which aims to connect a tourist ‘product’ such as cycling, a tradition (Trentino is a land of cyclists, starting from Moser up to Paternoster), to an international cultural event. An unprecedented project, not the usual brokerage operation, to attract Italian and foreign tourists and enthusiasts ”.