An endless gallery of faces and portraits that span time and speak to everyone.
At Palazzo Blu arrives “Razza Umana”, the project by Oliviero Toscani Studio, which from April 17 to June 29 will bring to the museum’s halls a multitude of photographic portraits collected over the years by the great master of photography and brilliant communicator, together with his team.
This is the first exhibition dedicated to one of Oliviero Toscani’s most iconic projects, opening in Italy just a few months after his passing.
Razza Umana is a socio-political, cultural, and anthropological study that portrays human morphology to observe its peculiarities and features, capturing both differences and similarities.
Oliviero Toscani, alongside his students and collaborators, traveled the world photographing human beings in squares and on the streets, setting up an itinerant photographic studio on each occasion and gathering, to date, an archive of around 100,000 images.
Toscani even brought one of these sets to Pisa during the months when Palazzo Blu was being established, between 2007 and 2008, photographing dozens of people within the very halls of the building, who offered themselves to be portrayed through his artistic lens.
More than 500 images, in various formats, are now exhibited at Palazzo Blu for the first time as part of a display that combines these “local” faces with many others captured around the world.
The exhibition is further enriched by a selection of some of Toscani’s most iconic images—photographs that have marked his extraordinary career.
The Razza Umana project continues to this day thanks to a dedicated team, always guided by the words of its creator, who used to say:
“I am moved by the uniqueness of every individual, and that is why I photograph human beings in their many expressions.”
In the spirit of a project that lives on, on the day of the exhibition’s opening—April 17—the Razza Umana photographic set will once again be set up at Palazzo Blu, ready to welcome new faces to be portrayed.
© RAZZA UMANA / OLIVIERO TOSCANI STUDIO
