Photography of the ‘primitive’ in Italy: perceptions of the peasantry at the turn of the twentieth century

Abstract

The art of photography was a powerful force in shaping an image of Italian national identity. Itself a product of industry, photography possessed an inherent affinity with progress and innovation that advocates for the country's modernization embraced. Because of its reproducibility, the medium also served an effective pedagogical function. It provided visitors to exhibitions, as well as users of books and magazine, with unifying images around which to construct a new consciousness. During the first fifty years of Italian unification with Rome as capital (1871–1921), a key focus of this standardizing imagery was ‘primitive’ Italy – the undeveloped countryside and its peasant inhabitants whose ‘simple’ and ‘genuine’ way of life embodied both the origins of Italy's distinct culture and the atavistic tendencies that challenged, or were aggravated by, its modern growth. Close analysis of such photographs reveals both the fundamental role primitivism played in the ideological formation of Italy and also the contribution of photography to debates that accompanied the integration of rural Italy into the national society, economy and culture, and the modern world.