Centers and peripheries in contemporary Italian photography.

Looking at Italy today, one will see a multiplicity of regions, accents and traditions -- not necessarily the mythic birthplace of Western civilization, Italy's fragmentation mirrors the complexity of the European project of community because it presents a mosaic of cultural differences within a national unity.

In 1979, in Storia dell'arte italiana (Vol. 1), Enrico Castelnuovo and Carlo Ginzburg contested the global image of Italian art history in an essay entitled "Center and Periphery." They suggested a new approach to Italian art through the study of the regional schools and the individual artist's "deviations" from a central "norm." The essay intended to relocate the so-called "peripheries" as "centers" in their own right; it mapped Italy as a multi-regional entity, and it encouraged further inquiry on the local contexts and productions.

Italian contemporary photography can also be approached in the terms outlined by Castelnuovo and Ginzburg, as it presents a regional pattern rather than a unified, homogeneous center. For the past 50 years, regionalism in Italian photography has played a decisive role, both to the advantage and disadvantage of the medium. Regionalism has generated creative projects for the interpretation of local cultures, but it has also caused an institutional delay in the support of archives, museums and educational activities. The lack of a national style has thwarted a significant art market for photography.

The critical analysis of regionalism goes back to the 1940s with Antonio Gramsci's study of local traditions -- anthropology, folklore and dialects. Along these lines, Italian neorealist writers, filmmakers and photographers paid close attention to the culture of everyday life. Since the 1970s, Italian regionalism has been an active element in the critique of consumer culture and media as well as Italian stereotypes and mythologies. Not surprisingly, most creative projects in photography in the past 30 years have tried to suggest what Italy is by showing what it is not: not the leaning tower of Pisa, nor the picturesque landscape, nor the collection of masterpieces stored in museums.

One photographer in particular, Luigi Ghirri, became the spokesperson for these projects, Ghirri, who died in 1992, knew what it meant "to suggest," both with words and with pictures. He left an important legacy of his interest in the phenomenology of an Italian "elective landscape" -- a marginal, fleeting landscape, rich with local memories and daily events, which he captured with lightness, wit and a childlike wonder.

He saw this landscape as the alternative to the cliches of Italian culture. He entitled one of his many series "Italia Ailati" (1971-1979) with the intention to mirror the omnipresent, official image of the country ("Italia") with the reversed word and image ("ailati"). He sandwiched both images, and from that he derived a sense of estrangement and surprise. In Luigi Ghirri (1979), the catalog to his exhibition at the University of Parma, he noted:

Whenever I have traveled in italy by train, I always observed with enjoyment the distance between the landscape seen from the window of the train and the photographs hanging inside the compartment of the train: these photographs illustrated the invariable leaning tower of Pisa, the Romanesque cathedrals, the Renaissance cities, the mountains, the lakes, and the Mediterranean pine trees. Thus, my travel was twofold: one perceived outside, from the window, and one experienced inside, in the train's compartment.

Ghirri photographed the space "in-between" two Italies -- the peripheral and the mainstream -- with a lyrical and critical eye. His work revealed the possibility of integrating personal and collective memory, indicating, as he said, "a new set of clues" for the perception of Italian landscapes. With this intention and dedication, Ghirri curated an exhibition, "Viaggio in Italia" (1984), which brought together the work of 20 photographers to depict the peripheral and the vernacular landscapes of the peninsula.

"Viaggio in Italia" set Italian photography in a dialogue with European trends and aesthetics (such as the French commission of DATAR, 1983-1987), and elicited institutional support. As in France, the Italian photographers were expressly commissioned to record the country's marginal areas, abandoned architecture and ecological disasters.

The northern region of Lombardy, whose center is Milan, has proven to be one of the most sensitive to these documentary projects. In 1987, the region's administration commissioned photographers to document the local art and architecture. Over 40 Italian photographers became involved in the project, producing various exhibitions, books and panels, as well as a public collection in Milan, the "Archivio dello Spazio" (Archive of the Space), under the supervision of the critic Roberta Valtorta.

Another region, Emilia-Romagna, has also been a site of much activity in photography. Beginning in 1989, a series of workshops and commissions titled "Linea di confine" (Borderline) have comprised the project. Different from the Lombardy project, "Borderline" involved both foreign photographers (Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore and Frank Gohlke of the U.S.; Michael Schmidt and Axel Hutte of Germany; John Davis of the U.K.) and Italian photographers (Guido Guidi, Olivo Barbieri and William Guerrieri). The critic Paolo Costantini (now Curator of Photographs at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal) has been responsible for the project. Since 1994, Emilia-Romagna has also supported a photography Biennial in Modena, organized by the photographer and critic Filippo Maggia. "Modena per la fotografia" (Modena for Photography), the title and slogan for the Biennial, has gathered both emerging and established European and U.S. photographers to share their work and begin to define a common vocabulary in contemporary art and aesthetics. Another major gathering of European photographers occurs in Turin with the support of the Italian Foundation for Photography, directed by Diego Mormorio and Luisella D'Alessandro.

Although these public commissions, conferences and other events have given support to photography, educational programs have remained scattered. There are no graduate programs in photography in Italy, in studio or in history. Undergraduate programs, which are usually taught by a single well-known photographer or critic, are found in several of the Academies of Fine Art (Mario Cresci at the Academy of Bergamo; Angelo Schwarz at the Academy of Venice; Claudio Marra at the Academy of Florence). There is also an undergraduate program in the commercial school in Milan, Riccardo Bauer, where Valtorta is a major presence. Other programs are individually organized by photographers Martino Marangoni directs an international school with workshops and exhibitions in Florence and has recently founded the Friends of Studio Marangoni for the exchange of information and work between Italy and the United States. Another photographer, Roberto Salbitani, lives in Tuscany and organizes itinerant photography classes in the countryside.

The current situation of archives and museums indicates that the history of photography has not yet been acknowledged as an integral part of Italian culture. Most Italian libraries are rich with photographs and are still to be uncovered. Various archives are scattered throughout in Milan (Publifoto, Patellani, Monti), Venice (Collection Fortuny), Florence (Alinari Archives, Archive of Tuscany in Prato), the region of Emilia-Romagna (CSAC: Centre for the Study and Archive for Communication at the University of Parma; Panizzi Library in Reggio Emilia) and the Piedmont region (Vittorio Sella Archive in Biella; Museum of Cinema in Turin). Almost as an homage to Andre Malraux's project of a "museum without walls," the current Italian publications are replacing the collections to showcase this work. In particular one publisher, Art&, is involved in the promotion of contemporary Italian photography Beside Art&, Motta, SEI, Electa, Alinari and Allemandi publish books on photography

Despite the uneven pattern of activities, archivists and photographers are calling for unified institutional support. Paradoxically, Italian photographers today strive for a global, European community, while their work speaks of regional contexts and seeks for the illustration of their myths and narratives. However, a new phenomenon of layering of local cultures is occurring in the Italian regions with the increasing flow of immigrants from Africa, Albania and Yugoslavia. A recent exhibition, "Aemilia" (1996), curated by Roberta Valtorta and Laura Gasparini, studied this change with local photographers working in the town of Reggio Emilia. This project has revealed how the local culture has been transformed by the recent influx of foreign immigrants. In this new context, foreign dialects are mixing with local ones, thereby reinforcing the sense of a nation

If you visit Italy today, you might be surprised to find a constellation of races. In the compartment of your train, you are likely to meet a foreigner. You look out of the window, and a voice from Africa speaks to you in English, telling you that she wants to become an italian citizen. You are foreign to each other. You share your worldly peripheries, and you redefine a place, as you speak. In the gradual transformation of this cultural geography, the foreign accents become the photographs of a place that you call Italy.