A flood of emotions
[
Maddalena Delli]
Pope Paul VI, whith whom Tuscan-born photographer
David Lees was on particularly friendly terms, used to jockingly address him as his English Florentine friend, but David Lees has always considered himself a true-born Florentine. Not surprisingly then, the reportage he holds closest to his heart is the coverage of the terrible flood that devastated the city of Florence on November 4th 1966. At the time Lees was ill and staying in Rome, but as soon as he was informed of the flood from the New York Life offices, he reached Pisa on a military plane and from there continued to Florence by helicopter. Together with the documentary shot by another great Florentine, director Franco Zeffirelli, Lees's photos are the most precious and compassionate accounts of that disaster, which stirred the world for its artistic as well as human implications.
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