Christopher Köller | Palimpsest: Italian Youth camps of the 1930’s | 30 January - 22 February 2025

Christopher Koller began exploring a new subject with his Diana plastic camera in 2017. An abiding interest in the architecture of Fascist Italy led him to begin photographing the regime’s repurposed, deserted and wrecked ‘colonie’ (holiday camps). While an accident cut short Koller’s work on the project and Covid extended the break, in 2023 he returned to Italy to complete the series. From the late 19th century Italian charities and churches had provided seaside holidays for underprivileged and invalid youth, improving their health through a regime of fresh air, nourishing food and exercise. When Mussolini’s Fascist party assumed power in 1922, construction of seaside and inland camps for the young was taken over by the state and their production accelerated. The Fascist government understood that the health and fitness of working-class Italian children and youth needed improvement to prepare them for future military service. In the 1930s large manufacturing companies including Olivetti, Piaggio and Fiat also began building seaside holiday camps to improve the health and wellbeing of skilled workers and their children.

Ambitious and talented architects competed to design colonie, using a range of styles and approaches from classicism to futurism and modernism. Most featured spacious grounds with views out to sea, the setting for outdoor physical training and obedience to militaristic discipline. “Comradeship was instilled in the … youth—who played, ate, slept, and marched together—in an attempt to dislodge older allegiances to place, church and family.” One of the more remarkable and intact examples is the ochre-coloured Colonia Marina Rosa Maltoni Mussolini at Calambrone on the Tyrrhenian coast, designed (1926-31) by prolific state architect Angiolo Mazzoni. Colonia Marina XXVIII Ottobre on Italy’s east coast at Cattolica was designed for the sons of expatriate Italians by Clemente Busiri-Vici (1933-34). It featured dormitories in the shape of fantastical seagoing vessels. While some were demolished, two remaining examples were recently converted into acquaria attracting contemporary tourists. Scottish Pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi, the son of an icecream vendor, recalled enjoying a summer holiday there as a child and was thrilled to take his stylish uniform of sailor’s cap, white pants and black shirt home to Glasgow at the end of his stay. 

While new uses have been found for some colonie, others including the monumental Colonie Marina Costanzo Ciano di Varese (1938) and delle Montecatini (1939) at Milano Marritima have descended into ruinous condition as they await demolition. Their destruction is amplified by the effects of Koller’s plastic camera as it leaks light, imprinting symbols and numbers from the backing paper onto the film and wreathing subjects in shadow. The Diana’s faults imbue the colonie with a sense of foreboding, alluding to their origins in a totalitarian system of government. 

Text | Nanette Carter

Christopher Köller trained as a silk-screen printer and then inspired by the Beat writers and an intense curiosity, travelled extensively throughout the late 1960s and ’70s. He returned to Australia to study photography at Prahran under Athol Shmith and John Cato, and after graduating lived in Japan where he took photos and became immersed in the world of Japanese gardens and bonsai from 1983-4. Köller has held solo exhibitions of his photographs, installations and video works in various Australian cities and in Japan, England, Spain and Mexico. His work has been included in group-exhibitions in France, Italy, Spain, and throughout Australia. The Visual Arts Board has awarded Köller two grants and he has been accepted for four residencies, the most recent, in Barcelona in 2008. Köller’s work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the City of Monash, Griffith University, the Bibliotheque Nationale of France and the Sata Corporation Collection, Tokyo. In 2002 Köller completed a Masters Degree in Fine Art at RMIT and he lectured in photography at the Victorian College of the Arts until 2009. Since 2010 Köller has been focusing exclusively on his practice.