Overview

An intimate look at World War II’s Italian Campaign through the photographs, letters, drawings, and poems of noted architect and artist Alfonso Carrara  Alfonso Carrara was a young Italian-American, born in Chicago to Italian immigrant parents, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Landing at Anzio and traveling to Milan, he translated for the American and British officers and photographed his experiences along the way.  Happenchance is a timeless collection of drawings, letters, photographs and poems that commemorate intimate details and recollections of World War II’s Italian Campaign (1942–1945). Published posthumously, the book contains reflections on Carrara’s work and impact from the Italian Cultural Institute, art consultant Paul Berlanga, and Rolf Achilles and Alan Cohen, formerly of The Art Institute of Chicago.

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9781450701044

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Dramatic in design and content, this beautiful book is well worth holding and experiencing.-- Michelangelo Sabatino, IIT Architecture Chicago, award-winning author of Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy In the short vibrant time of the mid-twentieth century, when he grew from being an isolated dreamer into being a prized student of exemplary artists/teachers, an impatient Alfonso Carrara became a potter, sculptor, architect, photographer, draftsman, visual historian, painter, soldier and poet. With a rich intelligence, he addressed, in its many forms, the many consequential issues of war, invention, truth and memory. -- Alan Cohen, photographer and author On its 184 pages, Happenchance is Alfonso Carrara's personal encounter and memory with history during 1942 and 1945 in the US Army in parts of northern Italy. Carrara's many photographs and more typed words on ragged pages show us end-of-war village destruction, people searching for a future, revenge, and a dead Mussolini and his mistress in pine coffins. Carrara's is a remarkable personal visualized memory in words and pictures of what his eyes saw to remember as he pushed the camera's shutter and a typewriter's keys. -- Rolf Achilles, historian

Author Information

Alfonso Carrara was born in Chicago to Italian immigrants. Following education in Catholic schools, he studied with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy at the School of Design in Chicago. In 1942, he was drafted into the US Army. Landing at Anzio, Italy, and traveling to Milan, he translated for the American and British officers and photographed his experiences along the way. Following the war, he returned to Chicago in 1945 and worked as a commercial architect until 1993. He endeavored as a potter, artist and photographer until his death in 2012.

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