Photographing Italy: Identity, History, and the Contemporary Landscape.
Truth and Fiction: Constructing Identities in the Second Half of the 19th Century, the second of a series of webinars by Professor Giovanni Aloi, Art historian in modern and contemporary art
Thursday, March 18 at 6pm (Central Time)
Presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago
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
Truth and Fiction: Constructing Identities in the Second Half of the 19th Century, the second of a series of six lectures, will look at photography as a personal and social mirror pivotal to the construction of modern cultural identities. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the awareness that photography could do much more than objectively document reality began to take hold. At this time, Italian aristocrat, Virginia Oldoïni, better known as the Countess of Castiglione, played important roles in the political history of the country as well as in the emerge of photography as a true art form.
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.
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.
Registration is required. Click here to register.