La fiaba e la precisione: la mostra Nuovo paesaggio americano/Dialectical Landscapes (1987)

Abstract

The 1987 exhibition Nuovo paesaggio americano/Dialectical Landscapes, organized in Venice by the late Paolo Costantini with photographs of Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, John Gossage, and Stephen Shore, offered the Italian public the first major opportunity to experience firsthand a selection of recent works by five exponents of the so-called New Topographics movement. Focusing on the critical writings by Costantini and Luigi Ghirri, this essay maps the exchanges, readings, and misunderstandings between Italian and American photographic culture generated by the exhibition at a crucial moment in the canonization of the ‘Italian school’ of landscape photography.