Florence will host the world's first photography exhibition for the blind later this month.
The show will inaugurate the new Alinari National Museum of Photography (MNAF) - whose collection contains the catalogue of Italian photo pioneers the Alinari brothers - on October 28 .
Organizers have selected 20 of the most important shots in the collection and transformed them into 3D reliefs which blind people can touch in order to perceive what the images show .
"We blind people need three dimensions to be able to touch the reliefs with our hands and reconstruct the images in our minds," said Carlo Monti, the president of the Italian Blind Union .
"Aside from their fresh, evocative power, these reliefs were produced according to rigorous scientific criteria" .
The reliefs are brightly coloured, so the partially sighted will be able to make the most of the experience .
They will be flanked by Braille descriptions of what they portray .
The works were produced with a variety of materials, such as glass, wood, fabric, paper, sand and metal, so as to better convey the emotions of elements depicted in the works .
Sand has been used for a relief of the pyramids, for example, handmade Indian paper for a rose and pine-tree bark for rocks .
A portrait of the American millionaire art collector Peggy Guggenheim is complete with offbeat 1950s glasses and jewellery. "It is a noble, courageous initiative, which we play host to with great pride," said Claudio De Polo, the president of the Fratelli Alinari publishing house, which will run the museum .
"Photography is not just images. Above all it is imagination" .
Leopoldo, Giuseppe and Romualdo Alinari are considered the fathers of Italian photography. In 1852 they set up a small photography studio in Florence. It took off quickly, enabling the brothers to specialize in photographing monuments and landscapes, undertaking commissions for Britain's Prince Albert and many other famous people .
The family went on to systematically photograph the nation after unification in 1861, documenting Italy's transformation from rural quaintness to industrial powerhouse .
The Florence show follows in the tracks of a recent exhibition in the northern city of Bergamo, which enabled blind and sighted art lovers to enjoy modern Italian sculpture .
Like the MNAF show, this also enabled the blind to touch the works on display .
Sighted visitors could opt to be taken around the exhibit blindfold, led by blind guides .
The aim was to help sighted people to understand what it means to be blind and enable them to appreciate sensorial experiences that are not based on vision. The MNAF exhibition will be open every day except Wednesday. Tickets cost nine euros .
