On January 7, 2019, photography turned 180 years old. Nearly two centuries have passed during which what was the new and revolutionary medium has become, at increasing speed, a daily generator of imagery and narratives.
The Municipality of Ferrara and the Ferrara Arte Foundation, in collaboration with the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, pay tribute to this long and exciting story with a significant exhibition set up in the spaces of the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea. The exhibition focuses on the emblematic figure of Italo Zannier – an intellectual, photographer and lecturer, the first holder of a History of Photography chair in Italy – investigating two aspects of his multifaceted activity, those of the passionate scholar on the one hand, and of the “innocent photographer” – as he likes to call himself – on the other.
Zannier’s enthusiasm and curiosity are reflected in the collection of some 100 precious volumes from his collection, which allow us to trace the evolution of photography from its origins to the present day. In this first section of the exhibition we encounter, among others, the Great picture of the history of ancient Rome (1816) by Bartolomeo Pinelli; volumes contemporary to Daguerre (1839-1849) on Horace Vernet’s journey to the East written by Goupil Fesquet; the 1951 London Exhibition catalog; The Thousand of Garibaldi; the Italic landscapes in the Divine Comedy; More men of Mark in phototype by Alvin Langdon Coburn; the Stieglitz Memorial Portfolio (1947); photobooks by Andy Warhol and William Klein; Minamata by William Eugene Smith; to the very recent and monumental volume Rome. An empire at the roots of Europe by Luca Campigotto. The books are browsed and commented on by Italo Zannier himself in a video played inside the rooms. Four other interviews with photography and art critics, Vittorio Sgarbi, Angelo Maggi, Massimo Donà and Michele Smargiassi, who are also authors of interesting contributions in the exhibition catalog, complete the itinerary.
The second section entitled. Italo Zannier innocent photographer documents his artistic activity, entirely unpublished, from 1952 to the present. In the halls of the Pavilion of Contemporary Art, about 100 photographs range from the neorealist approach of the 1950s, with a black-and-white color scheme, to more recent experiments with digital tools-a nucleus of images that constitutes an explicit statement of poetics and an ideological statement. In an age when the media are globalized and pervasive, the photographic lexicon that underlies them needs a new signification to understand the image beyond its immediate appearance.
The exhibition conceived on this dual track-documentary and artistic-will thus allow visitors to delve into the history of photography while at the same time questioning the very identity of the medium, which, despite its pervasive presence, still remains ambiguous and in some ways enigmatic.
Organizers
Municipality of Ferrara – Servizio Musei d’Arte and Fondazione Ferrara Arte in collaboration with Mart – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto