Fondazione MAST
Bologna, Italy

In the early 2000s the MAST Foundation created its space dedicated to industrial and work photography with the acquisition of images from auction houses, individuals, art galleries, photographers and artists. The assets of the Foundation, which already contained a fund that collected films, negatives on glass and on film, photographs, albums, catalogs that had been produced in the Coesia group's factories since the early twentieth century, has thus been enriched and has gone beyond the parameters of promotional and documentary material of the companies of the industrial group. Currently the collection has more than 6000 images and videos of famous artists and masters of the lens, as well as a vast selection of photo albums with thousands of images, which, as was usually the case in the industrial area, they are produced by unknown authors or by the company's own technicians who worked as a hobby, but no less representative of the world of work. Today the MAST Collection has established itself as a reference center, unique in the world, for the photography of industry and work. In addition to works from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the collection embraces contemporary photography with a process of value selection and an accurate methodological approach.