Italian Neorealist Photography

This book offers an analysis of the socio-historical conditions of the rise of postwar Italian photography, considers its practices, and outlines its destiny. Antonella Russo provides an incisive examination of Neorealist photography, delineates its periodization, traces its instances and its progressive popularization and subsequent co-optation that occurred with the advent of the industrialization of photographic magazines. This volume examines the ethno(photo)graphic missions of Ernesto De Martino in the deep South of Italy, the key role played by the Neorealist writer and painter Carlo Levi as "ambassador of international photography", and the journeys of David Seymour, Henry Cartier Bresson, and Paul Strand in Neorealist Italy. The text includes an account the formation and proliferation of Italian photographic associations and their role in institutionalizing and promoting Italian photography, their link to British and other European photographic societies, and the subsequent decline of Neorealism. It also considers the inception of non-objective photography that thrived soon after the war, in concurrence with the circulation of Neorealism, thus debunking the myth identifying all Italian postwar photography with the Neorealist image. This book will be particularly useful for scholars and students in the history and theory of photography, and Italian history.

This stunning book explores Italian Neorealism in photography, as it documented Italy's economic and social conditions in the mid-20th century and its rise as a democratic nation. Originally used for Fascist propaganda, the camera in Italy became a tool for artists to reveal the poverty and oppression of their country and a way to instigate positive social development and create a national identity. The NeoRealismo style became a call for economic justice as well as an artistic movement that influenced the modern world. The achievements of that movement are celebrated in this book with more than 200 illustrations, including exquisitely reproduced photographs and magazine images as well as film stills and posters. Together these images portray the seismic changes that took place throughout Italy during and after the war. The migration from south to north, the rural and urban poverty, and the desire to establish a national identity are all given expression through the photographers' lenses. Accompanying essays discuss the technological changes that transformed the country, trace the evolution of Neorealist cinema, and explore how writers became part of this revolution. Beautiful, raw, and free of artifice, these images and the people who created them ushered a unique and fascinating moment in modern art history. Copublished by Admira and DelMonico Books

Stillness in Motion brings together the writing of scholars, theorists, and artists on the uneasy relationship between Italian culture and photography. Highlighting the depth and complexity of the Italian contribution to the technology and practice of photography, this collection offers essays, interviews, and theoretical reflections at the intersection of comparative, visual, and cultural studies. Its chapters, illustrated with more than 130 black and white images and an eight-page colour section, explore how Italian literature, cinema, popular culture, and politics have engaged with the medium of photography over the course of time. The collection includes topics such as Futurism’s ambivalent relationship to photography, the influence of American photography on Italian neorealist cinema, and the connection between the photograph and Duchamp’s concept of the Readymade. With contributions from writer and theorist Umberto Eco, photographer Franco Vaccari, art historian Robert Valtorta, and cultural historian Robert Lumley, Stillness in Motion engages with crucial historical and cultural moments in Italian history, examining each one through particular photographic practices.

From Berengo Gardin to Giacomelli, Migliori, Patellani, and to Ghirri and Fontana, without forgetting Secchiaroli and the?paparazzi? season, this collection narrates Italian history between society and lifestyle. A collection built through the years with coherence and critical perspicacity, which from its early years has brought together big names of Italian photography and of international photography, such as Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand, Walter Evans. The first stage of this project is focused on Italian photography from the second postwar period.?Neo-realist Photography?. Transmigrations from the Rural Reality to the New Metropolitan Perspective 1945-1968 narrates social and urban changes which involved our country. A visual document, made of over one hundred vintage snapshots, which portrays a continuously changing Italy. Those are the years of the journeys from south to north, the reconstruction, the economic boom. Years of vital importance which defined Italian character and identity and which, today more than ever, are extremely topical because of the issues that were dealt with: migrations, urban transformations. 00Exhibition: Museo Ettore Fico, Turin, Italy (28.10.2016-29.01.2017).

Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City is a valuable introduction to one of the most influential of film movements. Exploring the roots and causes of neorealism, particularly the effects of the Second World War, as well as its politics and style, Mark Shiel examines the portrayal of the city and the legacy left by filmmakers such as Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti. Films studied include Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946), The Bicycle Thief (1948), and Umberto D. (1952).

Spanning four decades of radical political and social change in Italy, this interdisciplinary study explores photography’s relationship with Italian painting, film, literature, anthropological research and international photography. Evocative and powerful, Italian social documentary photography from the 1930s to the 1960s is a rich source of cultural history, reflecting a time of dramatic change. This book shows, through a wide range of images (some published for the first time) that to fully understand the photography of this period we must take a more expansive view than scholars have applied to date, considering issues of propaganda, aesthetics, religion, national identity and international influences. By setting Italian photography against a backdrop of social documentary and giving it a distinctive place in the global history of photography, this exciting volume of original research is of interest to art historians and scholars of Italian and visual culture studies.

In this beautifully illustrated book Maria Antonella Pelizzari traces the history of photography in Italy from its beginnings to the present as she guides us through the history of Italy and its ancient sites and Renaissance landmarks. Pelizzari specifically considers the role of photography in the formation of Italian national identity during times of political struggle, such as the lead up to Unification in 1860, and later in the nationalist wars of Mussolini’s regime. While many Italians and foreigners— such as Fratelli Alinari or Carlo Ponti, John Ruskin or Kit Talbot—focused their lenses on architectural masterpieces, others documented the changing times and political heroes, creating icons of figures such as Garibaldi and the brigands. Pelizzari’s exploration of Italian visual traditions also includes the photographic collages of Bruno Munari, the neorealist work of photographers such as Franco Pinna, the bold stylized compositions of Mario Giacomelli, and the controversial images created by Oliviero Toscani for Benetton advertising in the 1980s. Featuring unpublished works and a rare selection of over one hundred images, this book will appeal to art collectors and students of art history and Italian culture.

Unlike countries like France, the Czech Republic or Brazil, Italy did not have a new wave properly understood as a movement. However, while new artistic schools were emerging in many other countries, Italy was undergoing its most dramatic social and economic transformations. Those violent changes, together with the perceived necessity of renewing the aesthetic heritage of Neorealism, sparked a drastic regeneration of the cinematic language and marked the most memorable period of Italian film history.Italian Post-Neorealist Cinema explores the ferments of Italian cinema from the mid-50s to the end of the 60s, situating its wealth in the context of other national cinemas emerging at the same time. Olmi, Pasolini, Antonioni, Fellini, Visconti, the Taviani Brothers, Cavani, Rosi, Ferreri and many others all made their debut or directed their most representative works during the period. The book brings to the surface the lines of experimentation and artistic renewal appearing after the exhaustion of Neorealism, mapping complex areas of interest such as the emergence of ethical concerns, the relationship between ideology and representation, and the role of Italian counter-culture.