Italian seascapes through the tourist’s gaze. Liguria’s touristic imaginaries during the economic boom

The touristic phenomenon which interested Liguria Region during the Second Post-War radically changed the urban aspect of involved localities, with an almost uncontrolled building development tied to the growing need of “second houses”. Starting from this context, the contribution will investigate how tourists perceived mass tourism and how they represented the suffocating concrete sea surrounding them. Postcards and amateur cinema will be used as visual sources to explore touristic imaginaries vehiculated to the tourists from above and the free representations of touristic spaces made by the tourists themselves; with the aim to observe the evolution of the relationship between tourists and the sea, as well as the historical gaze towards the evolving seascapes of the region. With this purpose the Touring Club Italiano in Milan and the National Enterprise Cinema Archive in Ivrea have been taken in analysis with a study involving hundreds of postcards and home movies.