The collection is split into two different blocks of work commissioned by the Commune of Cinisello Balsamo through two photographic campaigns (in 1988 and 2002).

The photographs were all taken in the municipality of Cinisello Balsamo and can be divided essentially into three different types: a first group of pictures is of a sociological character, belonging to the genre of reportage (Bigi, Berengo Gardin), a second group is composed of photographs of architecture, for the most part of the building of Villa Ghirlanda, and a third is made up of images of the landscape (Chiaramonte, Berengo Gardin again): this breadth of vision is able to convey the changes that have affected the territory of Cinisello Balsamo between the end of the 1980s and the early years of the new century, linked to phenomena of urban transformation, social developments and significant symbolic presences.

The subjects range from the lives of people, very often the elderly, recounted in the photographs of Gianni Berengo Gardin and Rossella Bigi, to the historic homes photographed by Alberto Lagomaggiore and the urban landscape in the photographs of Giovanni Chiaramonte.