Una Certa Italia is the first volume that collects the most significant photographs of Giuseppe Loy taken between 1959 and 1981. The Giuseppe Loy archive, after years of research and archive work, has collected more than one hundred images ranging from political commitment to a look at the customs of an Italy undergoing profound change, a country described through the gaze of a photographer able to read between the lines of a society that is unique of its kind. With texts by Angelo Loy (president of the Giuseppe Loy Photographic Archive), Chiara Agradi (photography historian and curator), Margherita Guccione (director of MAXXI Architettura), Edoardo Albinati (writer), Alice Rohrwacher (director), Emilio Garroni (philosopher) , Luca Massimo Barbero (director of the Giorgio Cini Foundation Institute of Art History), Bruno Corà (president of the Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri Foundation) and Rosetta Loy (writer).

Giuseppe Loy (Cagliari, 1928, Rome, 1981) is the younger brother of the director Nanni Loy, and husband of Rosetta Provera, known in the literary world as Rosetta Loy. Giuseppe moved to Rome in 1938. From 1953 to 1957 he worked in the cinema as production secretary and then found employment in the construction company founded by his father-in-law. At the same time he carries out two non-profit activities: poetry and photography. The second will be a real obsession. Several exhibitions of him have been hosted at the Il Segno gallery in Rome. He died in 1981, leaving more than 70,000 shots and over 1,800 original prints that the Giuseppe Loy Photographic Archive has been enhancing over time. The photographic journey of the author ranges from a general interest in social photography – the story of countries, cities, people, atmospheres, architectures – to the profound and ironic story of the building aggression of the territory and the coasts of the peninsula in the 1960s and 1970s. . Giuseppe was then a close friend of the artists Burri and Afro whose portraits (together with those of Lucio Fontana) are among the author’s best known shots.