Photographing Italy: Identity, History, and the Contemporary Landscape, a Webinar by Dr. Giovanni Aloi
Thursday, February 18th at 6pm (Central Time)
Register at this link.
From their first appearance in 1839, photographic images have radically changed the way we live and think. Though it did not appear clear from the very beginning, photography is more than a tool for capturing the world in painstaking detail. Through photographs, we simultaneously construct who we are and understand where we have been. As such, much more than painting, photography deeply shapes our lives and thinking — it impacts our expectations, desires, and fears.
This series of six lectures and dialogues maps crucial moments in the history of Italian photography. We will consider the initial responses to the medium, how photography impacted the emergence of Italian national identity, and the rise of political propaganda. And we’ll explore the recent reconfigurations of Italian landscapes in contemporary art photography as part of a complex and ongoing identity quest — a critical approach with a focus on ethical, political, and environmental issues that has placed Italy at the forefront of international photographic debates.
– Drawing with Light: Camera Obscuras, Chemicals, and Plates
– Truth and Fiction: Constructing Identities in the Second Half of the 19th Century
– Dynamism, Ideology, and Power: Photographs of a Modern Italy
– Contemporary Italian Photography: In Search of a New Realism
– Conversation #1
– Conversation #2
#1 Drawing with Light: Camera Obscuras, Chemicals, and Plates
Our first lecture focuses on the birth of photography and its conflicted relationship to painting. The precursor of the photographic camera was a wooden box with a pinhole called the camera obscura. Italian artists like Canaletto and Guardi used it to paint their 18th-century picturesque views of Venice. In 1826, French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce perfected it into the first photographic camera. The official launch of photography in 1839 was enthusiastically embraced by the public at large, but artists, critics, and photographers spent many decades acrimoniously debating the nature and meaning of the new invention. Meanwhile, Italy became the most photographed country in the early history of the medium as pioneers rushed to capture its historically impressive archaeological heritage.
Giovanni Aloi is an art historian in modern and contemporary art. He currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York and London, and Tate Galleries. He regularly lectures on modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been translated in Italian, Chinese, French, Russian, Polish, and Spanish.