International events: Exhibition “Images of Italy. 1841-1941” in St. Petersburg in the context of the Russia-Italy year

November 16, 2011 to January 15, 2012 the ROSPHOTO State Museum & Exhibition Center (St. Petersburg) hosts the exposition of works by eminent Italian photographers “Images of Italy. 1841-1941” from the collections of the Alinari Museum of History of Photography, Florence. The exhibition is a part of the official program of the Year of the Italian language and culture in Russia.

The exhibition is an excursus to the history of the Italian photography from 1841 to 1941. The series of great photographs opens by the authors of the first Italian daguerreotypes (Amicci, Duroni) and calotypes (Veracci). “The golden age” of photography is reflected in the works of the leading studios situated in major tourists centers of Italy – Venice (Brezolin, Ponti, Perini), Florence (the studio of brother Alinari and J. Brodji) and Rome (Caneva, J. Anderson, Makferson). The photography of Southern Italy is represented by Giorgio Zommer and Robert Rive, masters of foreign origin who lived and worked in Naples.

The earthquake of 1908 which destroyed Messina and Reggio, was for Italy a symbolic boundary of the 20th century. The aftereffects of the earthquake were photographed by almost all Italian photographers of that time. The exhibition displays the works covering this subject by Luca Komerio and Wilhelm von Gloeden. The photography of the first half of the 20th century is represented by works of famous masters who belonged to different artistic schools – pictorialism (Gvido Ray, Peretti Griva), futurism (Paladini, Vanda Vultz, Castanieri, Parizio), surrealism (Mollino) and first neo-realistic experiments of Alberto Lattuad.