Pazza Idea: Angelo Frontoni and the pop icons at the Turin Cinema Museum

From September 20, 2025, to March 9, 2026, the National Cinema Museum of Turin will host the photography exhibition “Pazza Idea. Oltre il ’68: icone pop nelle fotografie di Angelo Frontoni”, one of the most eagerly awaited events of the Italian autumn. The exhibition, set up in the Temple Hall and along the helicoidal ramp of the Mole Antonelliana, invites the public to immerse themselves in the revolution of the gaze that Frontoni brought to photography in cinema, fashion, music, and entertainment between the late 1960s and the 1980s. With more than 200 shots, the Frontoni Archive opens up, revealing the authentic and provocative face of an era marked by profound social and cultural changes, and capturing the essence of the figures who shaped the Italian and European pop collective imagination.

The exhibition faithfully conveys the vibrant and ironic atmosphere that characterized society starting from 1968. The black-and-white portraits alternate seduction with lightness, experimentation with critique, creating a visual narrative in which pop icons appear not just as subjects but as living symbols of desires and contradictions. Before Frontoni’s lens parade artists such as Claudia Cardinale, Raffaella Carrà, Patty Pravo, Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot, and the Kessler twins—models of charm and personality that radiate energy and awareness. Each photograph becomes a story, an evocation, an active memory of a time that redefined the boundaries between public and private, stage and everyday life, dream and reality.

Frontoni did not limit himself to simple documentation; he transformed his subjects into conscious actors of a story greater than themselves. His photographs reveal men and women in the midst of a process of emancipation and transgression, with studied but never artificial poses, always capable of suggesting the unspoken and the intent behind each gesture. The heritage of more than half a million images, now preserved between the Museum and the National Film Archive, attests to his tireless research, involving both stars and lesser-known figures without hierarchy. The images on display retain their expressive power and their ability to engage with today’s viewers, who recognize in those faces and bodies the drive for change and the “crazy ideas” that animated those tumultuous years.

The strength of the exhibition lies in its ability to tell the story of Italy through its icons, interpreting both the successes and the struggles of its cultural industry, and creating a mirror of the great transformations of taste and lifestyle. From cinema to music, from advertising to television, Frontoni captured modernity and its fluctuations, offering a complex vision that embraces both the light and shadow of the society of spectacle. The exhibition thus becomes an opportunity to reconsider the role of the image in collective memory, the seduction of the portrait, the value of visual documentation, and the function of the photographer as an irreplaceable witness of his time.

The scenography of the Mole Antonelliana enhances the depth of the exhibition route, providing an immersive environment that allows visitors to contemplate the works with alternating focus and wonder. The decision to present the portraits in a layout echoing the spiral of history overwhelms the viewer, stimulating reflection and memory in a continuous oscillation between intimacy and spectacle. The exhibition addresses not only cinema enthusiasts but also anyone wishing to rediscover the roots of Italian pop culture, to understand the metamorphosis of taste, and to reflect on how mass culture has redefined the value of the image.

Beyond the grand gallery dedicated to the stars, the exhibition explores the interplay of irony and seduction, highlighting Frontoni’s ability to capture the game of provocation and the freedom of artistic expression. Each photograph becomes both document and performance, combining lightness with depth, alterity with identity, in a mosaic that invites the decoding of the twentieth century’s soul. The retrospective does not overlook the political and social tensions of those years: youth protest, the long wave of ’68, and the transformations of fashion and society form the counterpoint to a narrative built of gazes and gestures.

With his photographic “pazza idea”, Frontoni celebrated the ability to bring together art and life, to give voice to the dreams and anxieties of a generation that wanted to change the world. Pop icons are not portrayed for their fame but for their evocative power and their ability to reflect society itself: they are shifting mirrors that return lived experiences and desires in an endless play of references. Frontoni’s legacy is renewed in the plurality of languages, in the camera’s capacity to invent new forms, and in its ability to return stories that become memory and narrative.

The exhibition Pazza Idea establishes itself as one of the major events of the season, capable of stimulating debates on identity, visual culture, and photography as storytelling. Preserving and reinterpreting Frontoni’s archive means protecting an essential trace of Italian history, a body of work that has influenced how people view the world, think about art, and perceive themselves as both protagonists and spectators. Open to the public from Monday to Saturday, the exhibition invites visitors to embark on a journey that goes beyond mere documentation, embracing the variety and irresistible energy of an era that continues to fascinate.