This book traces a brief history of contemporary Italian photography which came of age during the post World War II years, at the same time that the cities that are documented were starting to be rebuilt. By the early 1950s a new generation of Italian photographers such as Ugo Mulas and Giorgio Avigdor began photographing the new cities with tough, high-contrast pictures in the wake of such 'neo-Realist' movies as 'The Bicycle Thief' and 'Miracle in Milan'. In the following decades Italian photographers such as Mimmo Jodice, Gabriele Basilico, Vincenzo Castella, Guido Guidi and later Paola de Pietri and Walter Niedermayr began travelling within the urban fabric of cities reproducing the gaze of anonymous citizens and ordinary passers-by living their everyday urban life. Includes essays in English and Italian by photohistorian Antonella Russo, Deborah Bershad, Executive Director, Art Commission of the City of New York, and Bernardo Secchi, professor of Urban Studies at the University of Venezia, Italy.