Italian Neorealist Photography

In Italy, photographic realism was only practiced for a decade - from 1940 to 1949, and by the end of the 1950s had been reduced to cliché. The original research and analysis contained in Neorealist Photography, which is fully illustrated by many previously unpublished images from the time, presents a new and necessary reinterpretation of neorealism - or the artistic search for the representation of reality - and considers its legacy. First detailing neorealism as a photographic phenomenon, Antonella Russo then conducts an interdisciplinary examination of 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; the guidance of the 'ambassador of international photography' Henry Cartier Bresson, as well as many other thinkers and artists of that period. The volume then takes into account the formation and proliferation of Italian photographic associations and their role in institutionalising and promoting Italian photography, their link to British and other European photographic societies and the subsequent decline of neorealism. For scholars of cinema and literature of the post-war period, this is a refreshing perspective on the debates, protagonists, political and aesthetic questions connected with the period neorealism. For the scholar or practitioner of photography, the book unveils a series of experiences and a body of works that have been largely invisible until now, unified as they are in this volume into a comprehensive text with critical appraisal.