1946 Germany – Italy – Greece

“Sacks of flour are lifted by crane from the bowels of the ship. The men are brown from flour dust and wear ragged cloths; a better clothed man keeps count of the wares.|”Evening in Genoa’s harbor district. A small alley, the Vico Targo. Three men, one barely moving on the ground, dance music emanating from an open door – the drunken frenzy of a town – in their stupor these youths have had a fight. People pour forth from all directions into the semi-darkness of the narrow street – will this man die? Silhouettes appear in brightly lit windows, in the foreground a door opens and a young mother with an infant at her breast peers out. And further off at the end of the street the silhouette of a black man’s thick neck as he presses his girl against the wall under the shadow of a street lamp. The harsh lighting maximizes the uncanny contrasts between life and death and between pleasure and pain. Night both conceals and reveals and further concentrates objects on the landscape in a way I never noticed until today.”

“At the end of the plaza a flight of stairs descends into an alley, from which emanate the sounds of boisterous company. I stumble upon things I never would have expected to find here: sailors and girls singing and dancing in the dim light of night. In an upper story a couple twists in a passionate embrace, overcome by the lust of the flesh, and throughout the alley you hear: ‘Cigaretti Americani, Inglesi’ – everything is a jumble.”