(by Maria Antonietta Aveni Casucci, from the introduction to the book)

Sometimes dreams come out of the drawer, have wings, linger on, glide and become reality.

This is the case of our new commitment.

When the elderly of S. Donato Milanese brought us the pictures from their family albums, we were gratified and moved but above all they revealed their small great secrets, enabling us to enter into their private lives, to live, through the images, one hundred years of their past.

We wondered whether it was fair and appropriate to communicate all this to others but they encouraged us to do so.

Today they have granted us even more. They have allowed the lens, sometimes indiscreet, of the expert photographers of S. Donato Milanese’s Culture Club - Photography Section to enter their private lives, to capture serene (and, why not, happy), official, and public moments of their lives in which communication sometimes appeared to be secret and instead openly became an example of common life and development for everyone.

This is the secret of "culture and the elderly"; inseparable words in a community which does not want to limit itself just to giving charity and solidarity but which expects to see in human and social development the only real objective for growth.

The S. Donato Milanese Culture Club and the Photography Section have long been aware that the elderly are stimulating and enriching and that taking care of them is more useful to the others than to the elderly themselves, that their past and experiences are an inexhaustible source of life.

This general picture, not only looked at but felt deeply, enables us to present the reader with an iconographic guide to the life of the elderly at S. Donato Milanese.