From Italy to the North End: Photographs, 1972-1982

This is about a young man’s journey to trace his family back to where they came from in Italy and then catalog the last days of the North End of Boston, along the old Italian men and woman who once called that area home. Anthony Riccio took some amazing photographs in Italy in the mid-1970s tracing his family routes. It shows a mixture of modern and ancient, communal and poor side by side, with some glimpses of the rich and middle class in Naples and Florence. And then he follows the paths of these immigrants to America, where they settled in the North End of Boston, then known as a ghetto for Italian immigrants–poor, communal, and proud all the same. But eventually developers came in and kicked out the old Italians and built up the neighborhood with expensive condos. As someone who is descended from Italian immigrants, these pictures bring a bit of nostalgia back to life. A lot of times I would see my grandparents and my aunts in these pictures, dressing up for Sundays and Saint Days, trying to survive in a foreign land, a legacy that has vanished and is being forgotten.