This evocative photo album is made up of 32 photos taken in a town in the Trentino region of Italy, near the Alps. It begins in November, 1917, when the Austrian army defeated the Italians at Caporetto and occupied Northern Italy. The narrative ends on October, 1918, when the Italian army was finally able to drive the Austrians back and rescue the starving civilians from the nightmarish occupation. The first lines of the album begin by saying "The masters of the earth arrived in the land of the slaves - they invaded the houses - arrogant tyrants." It describes the hunger of the people who are shown "cooking nettles in corners of the courtyards" and describes how the Austrians occupied the hospital, throwing the patients out on the street in their underclothes. The sophisticated ironic narrative imitates the "barbaric meter" made famous by Guido Mazzoni's mentor and Italy's poet laureate, Giosue' Carducci.

Unfortunately, there is no documentation of any kind for this item, but the town has been tentatively identified as Caporetto itself. Although we know that Mazzoni served in the military during the "Great War," in the end the provenance and the authorship of this beautiful homemade photo album remain a mystery.