Photography and Italy

In this book Maria Antonella Pelizzari traces photography from its beginnings to the present, guiding us through the history of Italy's people and the country's celebrated sites and its classic scenery. Viewing the works as a prism for exploring political and social developments over the past century and a half, the images reproduced here reveal the role of photography in the formation of national identity during the Risorgimento (the violent struggle that led to Italy's unification in the 1860's) and the rise and fall of fascism under Mussolini, the continued deprivation of southern Italy in the twentieth century, and the impact of today's voracious consumer culture.

Italy was a mosaic of competing states when photography was in its infancy, and early photographers, both Italian and foreign, specialized in making portraits of the middle classes and in recording ancient and Renaissance architecture. In the decades that followed, large numbers of photographs were generated for the rapidly developing tourist market, while an expanding school of amateurs experimented with new photographic processes and the influences of graphic art. The visual traditions of photography, from the Futurist experiments and photomontages of Bruno Munari, the socially engaged pictures of photographers such as Franco Pinna, and the bold, stylized compositions of Mario Giacomelli, to the conceptual experiments of the 1970's and the controversial images created by Oliviero Toscani for Benetton advertising in the 1980's, are described in this book.

Exposures is a series of books on photography designed to explore the rich history of the medium from thematic perspectives. Each title presents a striking collection of images and an engaging, accessible text that offers intriguing insights into a specific theme or subject.

Maria Antonella Pelizzari is associate professor in the Department of Art at Hunter College in New York. She is also the editor of Traces of India: Photography, Architecture and the Politics of Representation.