Il Mezzogiorno d’Italia nelle campagne fotografiche di Romualdo Moscioni (1849-1925): Napoli e l’Apulia

Abstract

The essay summarizes the intervention held by the author on Southern Italy in the photographic campaigns of Romualdo Moscioni (1849-1925): Naples and the Monumental Apulia, in the conference The "capital" city and the South in photographic representation between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, organized by the Neapolitan Society of Homeland History and held on December 16, 2021 at the Maschio Angioino headquarters. Romualdo Moscioni is one of the most important photographers active in the second half of the nineteenth century. His collection is now mostly kept in the Photo Library of the Vatican Museums: about 15,000 plates make up the Moscioni Fund, the institution's historical photographic collection par excellence. The essay illustrates, through a selection of images, his photographic campaigns in Southern Italy, from Naples to Palermo up to the famous Apulia Monumentale. Commissioned by the Ministry of Education and carried out from 1891 to 1892, it has as its background the great effort made by post-unified Italy in the census of the country's cultural heritage through the new photographic medium. Documentary strategies such as attention to cuts and proportions, work around the centrality of the frame, attention to the dosage of lights and shadows: these are the essential elements of a training process that focuses on the identity of the photographer, not only as a professional but above all as a conscious witness and interpreter of his time.