The charm of the Women of the Sea. Fosco Maraini. Photographs. Japan 1954

The MAO in Turin presents a selection of photographs taken in Japan by Fosco Maraini (1912-2004) celebrating ten years after his death, one of the most passionate intellectuals in the world and in particular to the eastern traditions of Japanese culture. The exhibition is the first result of the collaboration initiated between the MAO and the Museum of Cultures in Lugano, as part of the program signed between the two museums.
A Hèkura, fishing of awabi was a task traditionally reserved for women who practiced in apnea along the bottom opposite the island, in some cases even twenty meters deep. The report shows the fisherwomen of Maraini Ama, and athletic young women from the bodies, dressed in the traditional garment (kuroneko), in order to carry out their daily work, which consisted immerse into sea diving up to 20 feet deep using a curved blade to detach the clam and take it on the surface, floating in a basket. An unknown world, a tradition will disappear forever - today there are still few women, now elderly, who perform this task, but with equipment more "modern" - that's why the work of Fosco Maraini, besides the undeniable quality of the photographs, is still considered the prime witness of a vanished world.
For the occasion of the thirty photographs submitted to MAO will be enriched by the screening of a documentary made by Maraini: the short film, screened several times in the years following its creation, it was long considered lost until the recovery and restoration took place thanks to ' intervention of the Museum of Cultures in Lugano.
Along with the photographs will also be exhibited equipment made specifically on the advice of Maraini for underwater shooting and a selection of books from the Scientific and Literary Cabinet GP Vieusseux, which owns and promotes, as a bequest of the same Maraini, its heritage and photographic books. A valuable selection of nineteenth century Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) enrich the exposure of MAO, to witness the charm which gave rise Fosco Maraini in his journey of discovery, study and documentation of Ama.
The exhibition is under the patronage of the Consulate General of Japan in Milan and the Japan Foundation, Japanese Cultural Institute in Rome.

Fosco Maraini, traveler, anthropologist, photographer, writer and poet, in 1954 created a wonderful photo shoot in the islands of Hèkura and Mikurìa (Hegura and Mikuriya), off the western coast of Japan, where people lived and worked Ama, ethnic group fishermen, the original cultural traits. Among these traits, that certainly more obvious concerned fishing for a particular mollusk, the ear-shell, which was the main occupation of the summer months and the main source of income of the entire community of Ama.

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