The collection comprises the photographs of the construction of the rapid surface transit system that now links Cinisello Balsamo with Milan that were commissioned from Francesco Radino (Bagno a Ripoli, 1947) by the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea. The creation of this streetcar line signified, especially on a symbolic level, the expansion of the urban area and the integration into the growing metropolis of what had once been small municipalities but have now become satellite towns and even suburbs.
For four years, from 2005 to 2008, Radino, one of the most interesting contemporary photographers of landscape, industry and the forms of nature and culture, traveled many times along the route of the light railroad as the work progressed, from the end of the line at Piazzale Lagosta in Milan, along the course of Viale Zara and Viale Fulvio Testi and through the Parco Nord to the historic center of Cinisello Balsamo.
The author has focused his attention primarily on the materials that underwent transformation during the work: earth, cables, pipes, stone, concrete, wire netting, metal and barriers, mixed up with leaves, branches and elements of nature in the different seasons.
Alongside this discourse on material, something the author has explored in many of his other works, we find moments in the life of the workers, not related in the form of the traditional reportage but shown from close-up and very often through details, such as their tools, faces, hands, arms and gestures. There are also photographs of stretches of the tracks themselves, drawing attention to the changes in the urban landscape through which the streetcar line has been built.