Italian Humanist Photography from Fascism to the Cold War

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.
Martina Caruso is Associate Lecturer in Photography and Contemporary Media Cultures, University of the Arts, London, UK. She also co-directs the Giulio Turcato Archives in Rome, Italy
"Caruso's book represents innovative work in the field of visual culture. The richness of the material and the sophistication of the analysis create a remarkable set of new ways of thinking about the photography of the period. - Robert Lumley, Professor of Italian Cultural History, University College London, UK A welcome, imaginative reading of Italian photography that breaks new ground in a consolidated historiography of postwar neorealism and amnesia of the Fascist past. Through the lens of "humanist" photography, Caruso brilliantly situates the complex lineage of Italian photographic culture and proves its dynamic exchange across media and national boundaries. - Professor Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, USA"