Call for Essays
English version
Immagine di Piyapong Saydaung da Pixabay
#09
"Photography and Feminism in Italy: Journals, Exhibitions, Archives and Research Methods"
edited by Federica Muzzarelli and Raffaella Perna
The history of women’s photography is an ideal framework for reflecting on the practices of claiming feminist rights and identity, even when photographic works are considered historically, socially or artistically outside the sphere of outspoken militancy. The feminist aesthetic of such photographic images becomes the guiding principle with which to look at events from a new perspective, with new questions.
In adopting this critical gaze, the need to map a topography of feminist photography emerges. This map takes into account actual spaces, such as museums and galleries, as well as ‘diffuse’ ones, such as magazine pages, or even hybrid spaces like archives, where primary documentation can be gathered according to a conceptual structure. This mapmaking will not only bring to the fore the forgotten names among the more famous and recurrent protagonists, but will also outline the role of women photographers in their historical and political contexts as well as the weight that their activities carried at different times.
With this premise in mind, the present Call for Essays intends to investigate those spaces of visibility that women have had in the field of Italian photography, from the end of the nineteenth century up to 1980. The rhizomic inquiry that the current monographic issue will launch expands in two directions. The first aspect regards the contextualisation of the photographers’ work and the reconstruction of the spread of their images. The research will cover the spaces in which feminist photography is/has been represented. Some of the issues addressed include: in which exhibitions, critical debates, museum collections, institutions or magazines were, or are, women photographers present? What was their circulation? How did they influence the definition of a feminist imaginary? What methodological instruments have been used to analyse their work?
The issue aims to offer answers to the many open questions regarding the visibility of women in the field of Italian photography, their capacity to access exhibitions as well as the critical debate and interpretative analysis with which photographic research on women has been received and spread during the period under consideration.
The second aspect of the study focuses on conservation and the structural methods of the photographic archive, understood as a space of sedimentation and reactivation of the work of women photographers. The natural and spontaneous connection between the archive and the life of a photographer also brings into play the question of identity within the artistic panorama of its period. Researching an archive and its materials also speaks to the relationship of the authors with their work. On the one hand there are structured archives that reflect the awareness with which the photographers presented themselves in their contexts, rendering explicit their desire to build a legacy and narrate their work through the progressive formation of the archive. On the other hand, a fragmented or absent archival memory can reveal a conflict with the artistic or photographic experience that can reach an extreme point represented by its negation. Certain case studies exemplify this, when at a certain stage in their lives, the photographers abandoned their careers. The study of an archive needs to be methodologically investigative in order to trace the rise of these women photographers, or their disappearance into oblivion. The history of the archives and the choices made by the photographers allow to link the historical context of their life events and the present conservation and development of the material they produced.
Thus a complex mapping of the spaces of feminist photography will emerge, in which the spread and presentation of these photographers’ works throughout history (via magazines, exhibitions and public debates) is juxtaposed with the archive. The archive documents not only a photographer’s activity but also speaks to how they conceived (or did not conceive) of the issue of the legacy of their work, the awareness of the importance to transmit it to the next generations.
This edition emerges in dialogue with the conference Mostrare, promuovere e conservare: I luoghi della fotografia femminista in Italia (Exhibiting, Promoting and Conserving: the Spaces of Feminist Photography in Italy) to be held at the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia of the Sapienza University in Rome on 26-27 September 2024. Both of these occasions for research and scientific exchange are embedded within the activities organised and promoted by the PRIN La fotografia femminista italiana. Politiche identitarie e strategie di genere (Italian Feminist Photography. Identity Politics and Strategies of Gender) as well as the FAF (Photography, Art, Feminism) Research Centre.
The call includes, but is not limited to, the following spaces and themes to be explored:
- Exhibitions: type of install; critical writing supporting solo and collective exhibitions; the way women photographers’ work is mediated within personal shows or groups exhibitions or reviews;
- Journals: an analysis of the magazine as a space for circulating and disseminating knowledge of feminist photography, taking into account the cultural policies that supported the journals examined;
- Journal as object: what editorial choices are made; the graphic layout of images versus text; the recognition, or not, of the photographers’ authorship;
- Public debates: the presence of photographers in the critical and methodological or political and social debates;
- Archives: as spaces of memory; what the structuring of the archive says about the role of photography in its time; how the archival complex was formed; the influence of the spontaneous sedimentation of the documents and photographs in the post-narrative of the photographers’ practice;
- Archives in the present: the role of digitisation of photographic archives; the problematics and potential of the idea of a usable and widespread digital archive;
- Research methods: analytical perspectives and methodological criteria throughout history and Italian photography in relation to the photographers’ practices.
Bibliographical references
Bottinelli Silvia, Gastaldon Giorgia (eds.), “Yet who is the Genius?” Women's Art and Criticism in Postwar Italy, «Palinsensti», I-II, n. 9, 2020;
Bussoni Ilaria, Perna Raffaella (eds.), Il gesto femminista. La rivolta delle donne: nel corpo, nel lavoro, nell’arte, Derive Approdi, Rome 2014;
Casero Cristina, Fotografia e femminismo nell’Italia degli anni Settanta. Rispecchiamento, indagine critica e testimonianza, Postmedia Books, Milano 2021;
Casero Cristina, Gesti di rivolta. Arte, fotografia e femminismo a Milano 1975-1980, Enciclopedia delle donne, Milan 2020;
Casero, Cristina, Ci vediamo mercoledì. Gli altri giorni ci immaginiamo. La nuova immagine femminile nelle ricerche di alcune artiste e fotografe italiane negli anni Settanta del Novecento, «Between», V.10 (2015) http://www.betweenjournal.it/;
Hooks Bell, Feminism is for everybody. Passionate Politics, Pluto Press, London 2000;
Jones Amelia, Seeing Differently. A History and Theory of Identification in Visual Arts, Routledge, London 2012;
Lussana Fiamma, Il movimento femminista in Italia. Esperienze, storie, memorie, Carocci, Rome 2012;
Marra Claudio, Fameli Pasquale, Pompa Chiara (a cura di), Fotografia, corpo, comportamento, «Piano b. Arti e culture visive», vol. 6, n. 2, 2021;
Muzzarelli Federica, Album di famiglia e scrapbook vittoriani. Fotografia e femminismo nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento, «Uomo Nero. Materiali per una storia delle arti della modernità», vol. 20, n. 21, 2023, pp. 8-25;
Muzzarelli Federica, Il corpo e l’azione: donne e fotografia tra Otto e Novecento, Atlante, Monteveglio (Bologna) 2007;
Muzzarelli Federica, Photography and modern icons: the visual planning of myth. Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2023;
Muzzarelli Federica, Women photographers and female identities. Annemarie Schwarzenbach, new dandy and lesbian chic icon, «Visual resources», vol. 34, no. 3/4 (September-December 2018), pp. 265-292;
Perna Raffaella, Arte, fotografia e femminismo in Italia negli anni Settanta, Postmedia Books, Milan 2013;
Perna Raffaella, Ketty La Rocca: se io fotovivo. Opere/works 1967-1975, Silvana editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 2022;
Perna Raffaella, L’altro sguardo: fotografe italiane 1965-2018, Silvana editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 2018;
Perna Raffaella, Mostre al femminile: Romana Loda e l’arte delle donne nell’Italia degli anni Settanta, «Ricerche di S/Confine», vol. 6, n. 1, 2015, pp. 143-154;
Perna Raffaella, Scotini Marco, The unexpected subject: 1978 art and feminism in Italy, Flash Art, Milan 2019;
Pollock Griselda, Vision and Difference. Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art, London-New York 1988;
Raymond Claire, Women Photographers and Feminist Aesthetics, Routledge, London 2017;
Solomon-Godeau Abigail, Photography at the Dock. Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota 1991.
Operational guidelines:
The deadline for proposals is 20 July 2024. Proposals should be c. 300 words (including a selected bibliography) and a biography of 100 words. All materials and communication connected to the publication must be emailed to the editors and the publisher:
The assessment of proposals will be communicated by 30 July 2024. If selected, the authors will be expected to submit their contribution by 20 October 2024. Essays should be 5000 – 7000 words including footnotes and bibliography. The editorial guidelines can be consulted and downloaded at the following link: https://vcsmimesis.org/norme-redazionali. Articles must be accompanied by a 200 word long abstract, three to five key words and the author’s bio-bibliographic note of maximum 100 words. The abstract, key words and bio-bibliographic note must be submitted in both English and Italian, whereas the articles can be written in English or Italian. Authors must make sure that the rights to the images used are waived or free.
The essays will undergo a double-blind peer-review process. Reviewer’s assessments will be sent to the authors by 30 November 2024. If the referees consider the contribution publishable with revisions, the authors will have until 20 December 2024 to submit their revised essays. For any other matters, please see the journal policies at the following addres://vcsmimesis.org/norme-etiche
Call for Essays promoted by the 2020 PRIN – La fotografia femminista italiana (Italian Feminist Photography)
Bologna University, Principal Investigator and Head of Research Unit: Prof.ssa Federica Muzzarelli;
Parma University, Head of Research Unit: Prof.ssa Cristina Casero;
University Sapienza of Rome, Head of Research Unit: Prof.ssa Raffaella Perna