Behind the Songs: Floods of Florence

"And the holy works of love and reverence fell before the floods of Florence"
--Phil Ochs, "Floods of Florence" (1968)

The Great Flood of Florence, 1966: A Photographic Essay

On November 4, 1966, Florence experienced the most devastating flood of its entire history, which crippled the city and destroyed many of the world's art treasures. On that day, Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna, a twenty-six-year-old American artist living in Florence, went out into the flooded streets and photographed the dramatic unfolding events.

Kraczyna was awarded the Fiorino d'Oro--the highest honor of the City of Florence--for ten of those photographs. This book presents, for the first time, a selection of eighty-four of Kraczyna's flood photographs, taken on that tragic day and in the days that followed, as the city tried to deal with the immense disaster.