The Value System of Objects Through the Interpretation of Photographic Language

Abstract

AbstractThe design object finds in photographic representation a way - parallel to that of graphics - to the indispensable process of design reading. Photographic research has long been intertwined with the process of cultural qualification of the design object. The project that photography brings to bear on design is a visual narrative which, through an immediately comprehensible language, stands as a true parallel narrative, interrelated, yet not necessarily coinciding altogether with that of the written word. The object begins to circulate through the different channels of communication - from corporate catalogs to advertising pages and magazines - reaching distant people and places, sometimes even before the physical object enters the channels of distribution. This symbiotic relationship means that the object is very often accompanied by a valuable wealth of images, documenting and communicating its value system and its design, production and commercial processes, enriched over time by the shots taken by several ‘hands’, that is, by different authors who offer the opportunity for a multifaceted reading of the product. This text intends to give an example of the added value that photography represents for design through a series of paradigmatic cases (such as Gio Ponti’s Superleggera or Ettore Sottsass’s Valentine), which traverse the history of Italian industrial design from its early stage.