1952, L’Italia che esplode was the title of an unpublished work by Irene Brin. In this work the author conjured up a vision of her 1952 self working for a fashion magazine in 1968, the year in which she was actually writing. In a section of the typescript Brin left, the journalist imagined a meeting between a group of art directors of an international magazine who considered Christmas as an enormous personal advertising campaign. Brin wrote:
It is not unusual for cruel discourses to be heard at high level editorial meetings: ‘I’ve a great idea for December 1968. The lepers of the island of Kanai. Cheap and lucrative. The Hawaiian tourist industry will put us up and pay us a considerable sum. Timing. We can go there in March, that is before going to Bolivia to collect the material for the Easter 1969 issue: the butchered Che lives on in people’s hearts…Well the lepers of Kanai are not contagious and love to put on a performance. The only problem is that they are quickly cured and the Americans even do plastic surgery on them…Better to bring it forward a month. Shall we cover the carpet with a sheet of paper? My pointer, please. Look out… So. Here, o the right, a group of ugly leper women, old and tragic. Very torn drapery: lava gray, red-violet, at least one yellow. Sticks, crutches, all the necessary in short. On the left the pretty lepers. Scanty clothing, if one of them has a breast missing, photograph her from the other side. All in white, opaque. There could be a few little garlands, a dove clutched to the heart…Make sure that the heart is under the healthy breast. In the background, at the centre, the men of the tribe with spears. Who said that the Hawaiians are peaceful and don’t use spears? Nonsense Miss Furness. We’ll borrow the spears from the Honolulu Museum or bring them with us from California. In the foreground the Madonna. Beautiful. At he most a little spot on the forehead…A halo of white flowers. Blue dress, and since she’s squatting on the ground, be careful with the folds of the blue dress. Fifteenth-century Florentine. Next to her, St. Joseph. In a very bad state, very. Maimed? No, then he couldn’t be a carpenter. One-eyed. A bandage over the eye. Everything clear so far? Signorina Myrtles, be careful with that bandage over St. Joseph’s eye, it must not look like an advert for Hathaway shirts. In the middle, the Child. He should be a bit leprous too. And remember that we are collaborating indirectly with the charities, Corfam or whatever you prefer, sending half a dollar a month you will be supporting half a leper…Essential detail: the child is lying with some leaves and grass in a wooden crate on which is written clearly, ‘Eat Tropical Fruits’. Like the spears, you may have to bring the box with you from Los Angeles, I’m counting on you Miss Graves. This sheer should be reduced to a minimal scale, copied and subjected to the approval of the photographer, Mr H.C. Brown. (In such cases the art director should arrange for a photographer of little importance, who’ll follow orders and doesn’t throw fits.) Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for you energetic and stimulating participation.
Brin portrayed a cynical group of art directors in the passage I quoted above, revealing in this way how the fashion world had lost the cultural commitment it had when she first started writing about it as a young journalist. Things had indeed been a bit different in December 1951 when Harper’s Bazaar gave her a very special task, helping Henri Cartier-Bresson to find the right setting for a photographic shoot to be published in the magazine the Christmas of the following year. At the time magazines considered as very important to find a genuine setting and not to recreate one artificially as it happens nowadays. Brin tried to please the Paris editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Marie-Louise Bousquet, who had invited her to find “un petit amour de petit Noël italien”, but things looked rather difficult. Brin’s friend Paolo Barbieri warned her that Naples was better as a setting for Easter celebrations than for Christmas photo shoots; though Brin had obtained permission to shoot the seven half-ruined churches of Donna Margherita Caetani’s estate, Cartier-Bresson found them too decadent, while he considered a photo shoot of the Mass in an enclosed monastery too baroque. The quest for the perfect setting seemed to go nowhere until Cartier-Bresson and his wife spent December between Scanno and Matera and found the perfect scene in the living crèche of Scanno. The photo shoot accompanied by a reportage was published in December of the following year under the title “Christmas in Scanno”.
This photo shoot means a lot to me: first, Scanno is a town in Abruzzo, the Italian region where I was born; second, the photo shoot went against fashion, as it represented an idyllic world, almost archaic and frozen in time, a world that featured shepherd boys, women dressed in traditional costumes and elderly men wrapped up in their long and thick woollen capes. The reportage and photographs were published a year after they were shot, yet it didn’t matter as those images had assumed an eternal, deep, intense and magical meaning.
Nowadays things are very different and it wouldn’t be possible to do a photo shoot a year in advance. Yet it is a shame that those unique genuine images of Christmas are "banned" from our magazines in favour of artificial visions of a more fashionable, but also more bland Christmas. Open the December issue of most fashion magazines and you will find long lists of what has been fashionable during the year or of what you should be wearing at a trendy Christmas party. Everything is fake, disposable and ephemeral. There’s nothing memorable, moving or beautiful like that “Christmas in Scanno” photo shoot that seemed to combine fashion, culture, traditions and art together. Nowadays it’s all about spending and buying and those “cruel discourses at high level editorial meetings” Irene Brin fantasised about probably happen for real. I’m sure the stylish Brin wouldn’t like the way we treat fashion and Christmas nowadays and I think I'll be pondering about her work and words today. In the meantime, Merry Christmas to you all.
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