Università Roma Tre

The course examines the history of photography from its origins to today, considering photography as both a medium of artistic expression and as a social practice. We will analyze the Nineteenth-century origins of the medium, its ever more pervasive dissemination in all the spheres of everyday life, and the main technological metamorphoses that have shaped its development, up to the digital transition and the current employment in the online context. Discussing some of the most important artists of the medium (from Talbot to Nadar, from Alfred Stieglitz to Henri Cartier-Bresson, from Saul Leiter to Letizia Battaglia) and some of its foremost scholars (Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Allan Sekula and others), we will reflect on the elements that grant photography its expressive force, and on the kind of involvement these images may elicit in us as viewers.
More specifically, we will investigate the concept of “street photography” as a specific kind of photographic practice that intersects a wide array of different photographic genres (documentary photography, architectural photography, fashion photography, and so on). Precisely because of its hybrid nature, street photography can be profitably examined to reflect on the complex nexus between photography and modernity. Finally, the study of the influence exerted by Berenice Abbott’s photographic opus upon the cinematic rendition of New York in Sergio Leone’s film “Once Upon a Time in America” will allow us to reflect on the relationship between still and moving images.

The syllabus with the final course program will be made available around the start of the course itself.

Lorenzo Marmo, "Street Photography. La modernità, New York, il cinema" (Mimesis, 2023).
Collection of essays selected by the professor.