What is the relationship between the atom, which symbolises science, and human well-being? It was to answer this highly topical question that thirty-year-old Enzo Pasi from Romagna, after having been to Moscow the previous year to see at first hand the Soviet regime that was supposed to free mankind from slavery, embarked on a car journey with friends to Brussels in April 1958. Here the Universal Exhibition was being held, whose symbol was the atom and whose theme was human happiness. So it is only right to try again, perhaps to find out whether science and progress will save us by giving us the right answers.

The group of friends arrives in the Heysel park where the Atomium stands out, a futuristic construction one hundred metres high and characterised by steel spheres representing the nine atoms of an iron crystal), which Pasi and many like him are in a hurry to see because it will only remain standing for the six months of the Expo's duration. Instead it will survive to become a world-famous Belgian landmark, like the Eiffel Tower.

But here is Enzo Pasi in one of the rare moments in front of (and not behind) the camera while eating something. Here he is, like a good 'atomist', transforming the matter of the sandwich, or whatever he is ingesting, into the energy needed for the visit. Because nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed. But without elucubrating too much, because before climbing up the gigantic construction, entering its belly and seeing the view from above, the great hunger for Enzo is much stronger than the atom.