The handbook, the field, and the archive: photographic practices and the rise of anthropology in Italy (1861-1911)

The aim of my research is to provide a critical analysis of the interconnection between photography and anthropology along the institutionalization of the anthropological discipline in Italy from 1861 to 1911. The time span follows the first fifty years of the Italian unification and permit to consider the discipline’s role within the new nation. The research analyses the photographic archives of the museums of anthropology and ethnography in Italy. The main institutions I have investigated are the Museum of Ethnology and Anthropology (Florence), the Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography Pigorini (Rome), the Italian Geographical Society (Rome), the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions and the Istituto per la Demoetnoantropologia (Rome), Castello D’Albertis Museum of World Cultures (Genoa). Funding statutes, articles and travel instruction, are fundamental to analyse the making of the disciplinary structure; correspondences and travel notes are crucial sources to understand the practice of making and exchanges of photographs and the functions attributed to them. The research aims at reconstructing the mixed environment that characterized ethnography and anthropology in its making, informed by the interaction of multiple actors, agendas, geographies and systems of knowledge.