No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Order and otherness in a photographic shot: Italians abroad and the Great War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2017
Abstract
This article explores the meaning of photographic portraits of First World War Italian migrants, in terms of the tensions that emerge from their visual codes and the extent to which the subject’s interior reality and individuality might emerge from the reassuring surface imagery of photography and war. By analysing photographs of Italian migrants who either joined Italy’s army or enrolled in their adopted country’s army, we can see how the ‘otherness’ of the war – its artificial face of idealised glory, honour, and ordinariness, as presented through the portrait’s aesthetic codes – supplants the ‘otherness’ of the migrant individual, that is, their ambivalent life in between different cultures, traditions and identities. Yet, beyond the physical and psychological annihilation of the modern war, the photographic portrait, with its fabricated order and ‘otherness’, becomes, for the migrant soldier, a means of giving coherence to his dislocated existence. The nostalgic visual codes of the photograph, however, evoke an order that is now denied by the destructive mobility and mobilisation of both migration and war.
Italian summary
L’articolo discute le tensioni che emergono dal codice visivo, e la misura in cui la realtà interiore del soggetto e la sua individualità appaiono in ritratti fotografici di italiani migranti arruolati nell’esercito italiano, o nelle truppe del paese d’adozione, durante la Grande Guerra. L’alterità dell’evento bellico, ossia la gloria, l’onore e la normalità idealizzati ed esibiti attraverso codici estetici sembrano soppiantare l’alterità del migrante, la sua ambivalenza derivante da una esistenza vissuta tra diverse culture, tradizioni ed identità. Al di là dell’annientamento fisico e psicologico della guerra, la fotografia, inoltre, diventa per il soldato migrante, un mezzo per restituire coerenza alla sua molteplice dislocazione esistenziale. L’ordine e la normalità evocati dal tradizionale e canonizzato codice visivo del ritratto fotografico, tuttavia, vengono contraddetti dalla distruttività propria della mobilità e della mobilitazione sia del processo migratorio che del moderno evento bellico.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2017 Association for the Study of Modern Italy
References
Agutter, K. M.
2006. “National Identity Explored: Emigrant Italians in Australia and British Canada in WWI.” FJHP
23:84–99.Google Scholar
Agutter, K. M.
2009. “Captive Allies: Italian Immigrants in World War One Australia.” Australian Studies
1 (1): 1–20.Google Scholar
Alù, G.
2014. “The Peripatetic Portrait: Exchange and Performance in Migration Photographs at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century.” In Stillness in Motion. Italy, Photography and the Meanings of Modernity, edited by S. Hill, and G. Minghelli, 133–148. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Antonelli, Q.
2014. Storia intima della grande guerra. Lettere, diari e memorie dei soldati dal fronte. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Arigoni, A., and Barbieri, S.
1922. Gli italiani in Sud America e il loro contributo alla guerra 1915–1918. Buenos Aires: Arigoni & Barbieri.Google Scholar
Baily, S. L.
1999. Immigrants in the Lands of Promise. Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870 to 1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Barthes, R.
1981. Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bollati, G.
1979. “Note su fotografia e storia.” In
Storia d’Italia, Annali 2, L’immagine fotografica 1845–1945
, edited by C. Bertelli, and G. Bollati, 5–59. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Brothers, C.
1997. War and Photography: A Cultural History. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Campt, T. M.
2012. Image Matters. Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Choate, M. I.
2008. Emigrant Nation: the Making of Italy Abroad. Boston, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, G.
1992. “Introduction.” In The Portrait in Photography, edited by G. Clarke, 1–5. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Clarke, G.
1992. “Public Faces, Private Lives: August Sander and the Social Typology of the Portrait Photograph.” In The Portrait in Photography, edited by G. Clarke, 71–93. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Cottini, L.
2014. “Presente! The Latent Memory of Italy’s Great War in its Photographic Portraits.” In Stillness in Motion. Italy, Photography and the Meanings of Modernity, edited by S. Hill, and G. Minghelli, 149–182. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, R.
2012. Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity. Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments. London-New York-Delhi: Anthem Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douki, C.
2007. “The Liberal Italian State and Mass Emigration, 1860–1914.” In Citizenship and Those Who Leave. The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation, edited by N. L. Green, and F. Weil, 91–114. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, E., and Hart, J., eds. 2004. Photographs, Objects, Histories. On the Materiality of Images. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franzina, E.
2003. “Un fronte d’oltreoceano: italiani del Brasile e italobrasiliani durante il primo conflitto mondiale (1914–1918).” In Strafexpedition: gli altipiani vicentini nella tragedia della grande guerra, edited by V. Corà, and P. Pozzato, 226–247. Udine: Gaspari.Google Scholar
Franzina, E.
2008. “Volontari dell’altra sponda. Emigranti ed emigrati in America alla guerra (1914–1918).” In Volontari italiani nella Grande Guerra, edited by F. Rasera, and C. Zadr, 215–237. Rovereto: Museo Italiano della Guerra.Google Scholar
Fussell, P. (1975). 2013. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gemelli, A. (1917) 1918. Il nostro soldato. Saggi di psicologia militare. Milan: Treves.Google Scholar
Gibelli, A.
2007. L’officina della Guerra. La Grande Guerra e le trasformazioni del mondo mentale. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.Google Scholar
Gilardi, A.
1980. “I tabù impossibili della censura fotografica militare.” Rivista di storia e critica della fotografia. La guerra rappresentata
I (1): 40–44.Google Scholar
Hariman, R., and Lucaites, J.L.. 2016. The Public Image. Photography and Civic Spectatorship. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatton, T. J., and Williamson, J. G., eds. 1998. The Age of Mass Migration. Causes and Economic Impact. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henisch, H. K., and Henisch, B.t A.
1994. The Photographic Experience 1839–1914. Images and Attitudes. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Hoerder, D.
2002. Cultures in Contact. World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horne, J.
2002. “Introduction: mobilizing for “total war”, 1914–1918.” In State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War, edited by J. Horne, 1–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hüppauf, B.
1993. “The Emergence of Modern War Imagery in Early Photography.” History and Memory
5 (1): 130–151.Google Scholar
Hüppauf, B.
1995. “Modernism and the Photographic Representation of War and Destruction.” In Fields of Vision. Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography, edited by L. Devereaux, and R. Hillman, 94–124. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozloff, M.
2007. The Theatre of the Face. Portrait Photography since 1900. London: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Lalvani, S.
1996. Photography, Vision, and the Production of Modern Bodies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Laskin, D.
2010. The Long Way Home. An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War. New York: HarperCollins: 2010.Google Scholar
Leed, E. J.
1979. No Man’s Land. Combat & Identity in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Leoni, D., and Zadra, C., eds. 1986. La grande guerra. Esperienze, memorie, immagini. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Lucassen, J., and Lucassen, L.. 2009. “The Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–1900: What the Case of Europe can Offer to Global History.” Journal of Global History
4 (4): 347–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luconi, S.
2007. “The Impact of Italy’s Twentieth-Century Wars on Italian Americans’ Ethnic Identity.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics
13 (3): 465–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, M.
2013.
The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe, c.1860–1920
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malkki, L. H.
1996. “Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization.” Cultural Anthropology
10 (3): 377–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miele, M., and Vighy, C., eds. 1996. Manifesti illustrati della Grande Guerra. Rome: Fratelli Palombi.Google Scholar
Moriarty, C.
2004. “‘Though in a Picture Only’: Portrait Photography and the Commemoration of the First World War.” In Evidence, History, and the Great War. Historians and the Impact of 1914–18, edited by G. Braybon, 30–47. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Nicosia, A., and Prencipe, L., eds. 2009. Museo Nazionale Emigrazione Italiana. Rome: Gangemi editore.Google Scholar
Procacci, G.
2000. Soldati e prigionieri italiani nella Grande Guerra: con una raccolta di lettere inedite. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.Google Scholar
Roccucci, A.
2007. “Mito della Guerra e strategie politiche. La propaganda dei nazionalisti italiani durante la Grande Guerra.” In La propaganda della grande Guerra tra nazionalismi e internazionalismi, edited by D. Rossini, 115–137. Milan: Unicopli.Google Scholar
Rossi, M. S.
2007. Mia cara mamma. Lettere dal fronte di Americo Orlando. Pescara: Linea Blu.Google Scholar
Schwarz, A.
1986. “Le fotografie e la grande guerra rappresentata.” In La Grande Guerra. Esperienza, memoria, immagini, edited by D. Leoni, and C. Zadra, 745–764. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Serra, I.
2007. The Value of Worthless Lives. New York: Fordham University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Statistica dello sforzo militare italiano nella prima Guerra mondiale, Vol.1. La forza dell’esercito, Rome: Ministero della Guerra, Ufficio Statistico 1927, XXII s.Google Scholar
Starosta Galante, J.
2016. “The “Great War” in Il Plata: Italian Immigrants in Buenos Aires and Montevideo During the First World War.” Journal of Migration History
2:57–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterba, C. M.
2003. Good Americans. Italian and Jewish Immigrants during the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagg, J.
1993. The Burden of Representation. Essays on Photographies and Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, A.
2014. “World War I: The War of the Camera.” In The Great War. The Persuasive Power of Photography, edited by A. Thomas. . Milan: 5 Continents Editions and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.Google Scholar
Tosi, L.
1971. “Romeo A. Gallenga Stuart e la propaganda di guerra all’estero (1917–1918).”
Storia contemporanea
II (3):519–542.Google Scholar
Tosi, L.
1977. La propaganda italiana all’estero nella prima Guerra mondiale: rivendicazioni territoriali e politica delle nazionalità. Pordenone: Del Bianco Editore.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, A.
1990. Reading American Photographs. Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Ventresco, F. B.
1978. “Loyalty and Dissent: Italian Reservists in America During World War I.” Italian Americana
4 (1): 93–122.Google Scholar
Virilio, P.
1988. War and Cinema. The Logistics of Perception. London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
White, P.
1995. “Geography, Literature and Migration.” In Writing Across Worlds. Literature and Migration, edited by J. Connell, R. King, and P. White, 1–19. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wilcox, V.
2012. “‘Weeping tears of blood’: Exploring Italian Soldiers’ Emotions in the First World War.” Modern Italy
17 (2): 171–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar