Among the many subjects to photograph, sports and sportsmen were probably not Giuseppe Palmas' favorite. Nevertheless his impressive archive contains many photos depicting soccer players, cyclists, runners, swimmers, tennis players, boxers, pilots, etc. Yet the photos almost never show the players during the sporting events which made them famous. Palmas, who in his youth was active in track and field and soccer, never specialized in portraying sporting events. Most likely he was not really interested in this dimension. At least this is what can be understood from his photos. He seems instead to be more attentive to the portrait, the pose, to the classic photographic service for publication not so much in the sports press, even though he also conducted this type of work during his career, as much as custom rotogravure.

Thus in Palmas' archive there are actually very few photos which portray moments of real sporting events. In one of these, unfortunately not of the best quality, we see the victorious Livio Berruti at the finish line in the Olympic Stadium in Rome. Yet the photo is not of his mythic finish in the 200 meter dash at the 1960 Olympics but rather of a race the previous year for (campionati assoluti) in track and field (September 11, 1959), a sort of dress rehearsal of his later triumph. Other photos refer to training or events in which athletics is mixed with society news or custom such as those portraying the moments preceding the beginning of the first soccer championship game of 1951-52. The photos show a very young Delia Scala with Silvio Piola (at the end of his career) and Bonomi, respective captains of the Novara and Milan teams, and the umpire Agnolin. The actress does the symbolic kick-off of the game between her home team (Novara) and the Italian champions of the trio "Gre-No-Li" who would eventually prevail by 2-1.

The photo portraying Gino Bartali also appears to be a pre-race scene just before the start of the Tour of Lombardy in 1950. But in most of these photos the environment in which sports stars or personalities are depicted is familiar, at home, relaxing on vacation or just having fun. Indeed, one of the first series depicts sports stars with their families, some taken during Christmas vacation. The photos do not convey the otherwise austere and puritanical atmosphere of Italy in the early 1950s. Among the others we recognize once again the soccer player Silvio Piola, the Hungarian player Stefano Nyers (Inter team), Riccardo Carapellese, the Danes John Hansen and Karl Aage Praest (Juventus team) and finally Nicolò Carosio, the well-known soccer radio announcer of those years.

Then follows a series which shows athletes in training or relaxing during breaks and before or after games. The cyclists Fiorenzo Magni, Antonio Bevilacqua and once again Gino Bartali are pictured at Arona in a hotel in September, 1951. The omnipresent Bartali and Fausto Coppi are shown during the trials for the world championship in August, 1953. In February of the same year three soccer players are shown in the Turin stadium in training: next to Nyers (who in the meantime had changed teams) are the 1950 world champions Alcide Ghiggia from Uruguay and Carlo Galli. The two young female tennis players Lea Pericoli and Silvana Lazzarino, destined to be longtime rivals, are immortalized in training and before a match respectively, at the 1954 Italian International at Foro Italico in Rome.

The 1960 Olympics in Rome certainly represented a leap in the quality of Italian society's relationship to sports, mainly thanks to the new role of television in sports. One can recall the boom in sales of TV sets in the days preceding the finale of the 200 meter dash, won by the aforementioned Berruti. As usual Palmas' photos do not show the event itself, but rather the preceding months' preparation. Thus Livio Berruti, Abdom Pamich and Paola Paternoster, all in track and field, are shown training at Formia, while the swimmers Paolo Pucci, Paola Saini, Fritz Dennerlein and Velleda Weschi are shown preparing for the Olympic races in the swimming pool at Foro Italico.

Perhaps Palmas gives his best when he manages to catch athletes off the field, even on summer vacation. The lion's share of these photos are taken at Versilia and the Adriatic Riviera in the 1960s. However there are some even earlier scenes from the summer of 1956, with two soccer players from the Inter team, both now dead: Nacka Skoglund, portrayed playing the guitar at Forte dei Marmi with Marino Marini's band, and the goalee Giorgio Ghezzi in the company of Edy Compagnoli, the assistant in the popular TV game show "Lascia o raddoppia" (she later marries Buffon, another goalee, but from Milan). And then there is the famous car racer Manuel Fangio, also recently passed away, in Versilia, and John Haynes, mid-fielder from Chelsea and the British national team at Forte dei Marmi while playing the drums with Gegé Angelillo, Coach Helenio Herrera's favorite player, with his friend Ilya Lopez at Milano Marittima in July, 1963, where we also find Giacomo Bulgarelli having fun with his friends while waiting for the next season so that he can win back the championship from Bologna (1963-64). The following year Palmas photographed the late Edmondo Fabbri, coach of the Italian national soccer team, in Riccione, curiously in the company of the notable private investigator Tom Ponzi, who apparently had not given him sufficient information to avoid being beaten by North Korea two years later.

In this seaside vacation air Palmas transmits an atmosphere typical of the 1960s. When Sante Gaiardoni, gold medalist of the Rome Olympics, lifts up the singer Elsa Quarta in his arms, he is not only finishing his career, but is also about to conclude the era of the 1960s, and with it the Golden Age of this photo journalist.

Lorenzo Baldacchini