Agnese Ghezzi
I am currently a research collaborator at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, working on the "HUG" project dedicated to the analysis and valorisation of the photographic heritage of the city of Lucca.
In 2021 I collaborated with CINI - Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l'Informatica on the digital platform of the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii.
Between 2019 and 2020 I was Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, in the department of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wolf.
In March 2020 I completed my PhD in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at the IMT School of Lucca, with a thesis entitled "The Handbook, the Field, and the Archive: Photographic Practices and the Rise of Anthropology in Italy (1861-1911)" (Advisor: Dr Linda Bertelli, Co-advisor: Prof. Dr Kelley Wilder).
In 2018 I was Visiting Student at the PHRC - Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester.
I hold a degree in Modern and Contemporary History (M.A. University of Bologna; B.A. University of Florence).
My research interests include the history of photography, visual studies, archival studies, history of science, colonial and postcolonial studies, museum studies, history of collections, cultural heritage, curatorial practices.
In 2021 I collaborated with CINI - Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l'Informatica on the digital platform of the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii.
Between 2019 and 2020 I was Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, in the department of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wolf.
In March 2020 I completed my PhD in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage at the IMT School of Lucca, with a thesis entitled "The Handbook, the Field, and the Archive: Photographic Practices and the Rise of Anthropology in Italy (1861-1911)" (Advisor: Dr Linda Bertelli, Co-advisor: Prof. Dr Kelley Wilder).
In 2018 I was Visiting Student at the PHRC - Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester.
I hold a degree in Modern and Contemporary History (M.A. University of Bologna; B.A. University of Florence).
My research interests include the history of photography, visual studies, archival studies, history of science, colonial and postcolonial studies, museum studies, history of collections, cultural heritage, curatorial practices.
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Papers by Agnese Ghezzi
programmatic statements related to the main ethnographic societies and institutions. The aim is to understand how the visualisation of Italian cultures was shaped by the photographic frame, how photography was promoted as a valuable tool in the study of traditions and how photographs circulated inside and outside the ethnographic framework.
Special attention is given to the 1911 Mostra di Etnografia Italiana in Rome, curated by Lamberto Loria, through an examination of its protocols, networks, and visual methods. This paper raises questions about the entanglement between concepts of local, regional, national, and colonial, the emergence of local tradition and folklore as central identity elements, and the role and materiality of photographs within the ethnographic
system.
Books by Agnese Ghezzi
Book Reviews by Agnese Ghezzi
Catalogue entry by Agnese Ghezzi
Fotografie di Werner Bischof, n° 56
Roberto Pane, Architettura e paesaggio della Grecia Antica, n° 72
Circolo fotografico La Gondola di Venezia, n° 76
Fotografie di Domenico R. Peretti Griva, n° 84
Steichen fotografo, n° 131
Conference Presentations by Agnese Ghezzi
Many private and public photographic campaigns registered historical monuments and artworks, contributing to shape the unifying notion of cultural heritage and projecting the Italian roots in its cultural past. Differently, Fano was interested in the representation of the multiplicity of Italian types, with the attempt to represent the contemporary popular customs: “In which country that has a long and glorious history, with maybe the exception of India, can we find as much ethnic variety as in our own home?” . Rather than neglecting the regional particularism, Fano stressed it and inserted it in the national rhetoric, through an exotifying parallel with India.
In his view, the camera represented the antidote to the unstable mechanism of remembrance, constituting materially and visually a national memory, and saving society from oblivion and ignorance. Pictures got a trifold didactic role: politically, they instructed the nation on its multiplicity; scientifically, they became tools for the new academic discipline of ethnography; socially, they provided information on the condition of the popular class. Looking at the proposal by Fano and other similar attempts that arose between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century in Italy, the paper analyses the educational power attributed to ethnographic photography in relation to nation-building, and the negotiation between unity and variety, nostalgia and progress, imagination and documentation.
This paper aims at analysing how travel photography partook in the making of ethnographic knowledge in Italy between 1861 and 1911. By focusing the attention on travellers and their visual productions, the paper aims at reconstructing the mixed environment that characterised ethnography in its making, informed by the interaction of multiple actors, agendas, geographies and systems of knowledge.
Through the analysis of instructions for travellers and other written sources, the paper wants first to unveil the process of creation of ‘delegated gazes’. To ensure the reliability of the information received and, consequently, of the making of science, rules, recommendations and requests for the production of visual documentation were elaborated, calling for standards in the representation of cultures.
After having addressed the theoretical apparatus, specific attention is dedicated to the field and the photographers moving in such space, considering the practical elements underpinning the image production. Through selected case studies taken from the photographic collections preserved in the main Italian anthropological museums, the investigation leads to the distinctions of different kind of photographers, from studio professionals to amateur travellers, from photographers specifically hired for an expedition campaign to explorers equipped with cameras. An analysis of the materiality of pictures, the techniques adopted, the stylistic choices, discloses the manifold features of travel pictures in the development of the ethnographic discipline. Moreover, the paper addresses how the camera became a tool closely intertwined with travel imagery, rising as an undeniable companion for travellers and contributing to self-fashioning the explorers’ identities.
programmatic statements related to the main ethnographic societies and institutions. The aim is to understand how the visualisation of Italian cultures was shaped by the photographic frame, how photography was promoted as a valuable tool in the study of traditions and how photographs circulated inside and outside the ethnographic framework.
Special attention is given to the 1911 Mostra di Etnografia Italiana in Rome, curated by Lamberto Loria, through an examination of its protocols, networks, and visual methods. This paper raises questions about the entanglement between concepts of local, regional, national, and colonial, the emergence of local tradition and folklore as central identity elements, and the role and materiality of photographs within the ethnographic
system.
Fotografie di Werner Bischof, n° 56
Roberto Pane, Architettura e paesaggio della Grecia Antica, n° 72
Circolo fotografico La Gondola di Venezia, n° 76
Fotografie di Domenico R. Peretti Griva, n° 84
Steichen fotografo, n° 131
Many private and public photographic campaigns registered historical monuments and artworks, contributing to shape the unifying notion of cultural heritage and projecting the Italian roots in its cultural past. Differently, Fano was interested in the representation of the multiplicity of Italian types, with the attempt to represent the contemporary popular customs: “In which country that has a long and glorious history, with maybe the exception of India, can we find as much ethnic variety as in our own home?” . Rather than neglecting the regional particularism, Fano stressed it and inserted it in the national rhetoric, through an exotifying parallel with India.
In his view, the camera represented the antidote to the unstable mechanism of remembrance, constituting materially and visually a national memory, and saving society from oblivion and ignorance. Pictures got a trifold didactic role: politically, they instructed the nation on its multiplicity; scientifically, they became tools for the new academic discipline of ethnography; socially, they provided information on the condition of the popular class. Looking at the proposal by Fano and other similar attempts that arose between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century in Italy, the paper analyses the educational power attributed to ethnographic photography in relation to nation-building, and the negotiation between unity and variety, nostalgia and progress, imagination and documentation.
This paper aims at analysing how travel photography partook in the making of ethnographic knowledge in Italy between 1861 and 1911. By focusing the attention on travellers and their visual productions, the paper aims at reconstructing the mixed environment that characterised ethnography in its making, informed by the interaction of multiple actors, agendas, geographies and systems of knowledge.
Through the analysis of instructions for travellers and other written sources, the paper wants first to unveil the process of creation of ‘delegated gazes’. To ensure the reliability of the information received and, consequently, of the making of science, rules, recommendations and requests for the production of visual documentation were elaborated, calling for standards in the representation of cultures.
After having addressed the theoretical apparatus, specific attention is dedicated to the field and the photographers moving in such space, considering the practical elements underpinning the image production. Through selected case studies taken from the photographic collections preserved in the main Italian anthropological museums, the investigation leads to the distinctions of different kind of photographers, from studio professionals to amateur travellers, from photographers specifically hired for an expedition campaign to explorers equipped with cameras. An analysis of the materiality of pictures, the techniques adopted, the stylistic choices, discloses the manifold features of travel pictures in the development of the ethnographic discipline. Moreover, the paper addresses how the camera became a tool closely intertwined with travel imagery, rising as an undeniable companion for travellers and contributing to self-fashioning the explorers’ identities.
Terzo seminario nazionale, Dipartimento Sagas, Università degli Studi di Firenze