From 21 June to 6 September 2023 the exhibition Mario Dondero opens at Palazzo Reale. Freedom and commitment. The extensive retrospective of the photographic work of Mario Dondero (1928-2015), one of the protagonists of Italian photography in the second half of the twentieth century and a leading photojournalist on the international scene, is exhibited in Milan for the first time. Promoted by the Municipality of Milan – Culture, and produced by Palazzo Reale and Silvana Editoriale in collaboration with the Mario Dondero archive, the exhibition is curated by Raffaella Perna and will be set up in the Apartment of the Princes.

The exhibition aims to offer an overall look at Dondero's work, through a selection of images belonging to reportages and photo shoots made throughout his long career, from the 1950s to the 1910s. Along with many of the most iconic photographs, several unpublished shots are presented on display, provided by the author's archive, including some portraits of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Laura Betti.

The exhibition at Palazzo Reale aims to restore Dondero's long journey through a story that follows a dual exhibition criterion, chronological and thematic at the same time. The exhibition display of the ten rooms of the Appartamento dei Principi is conceived as a narration that winds along as many stages, each conceived as a micro-exhibition: from the photographs of the first trips to Portugal in the 1950s, to the shots taken in Kabul in the 1950s Two-thousand.