Aspirazioni fin de siècle: l’Esposizione fotografica di Firenze del 1899

Abstract

In 1899, the Esposizione fotografica nazionale e internazionale in Florence was a crucial event for Italian visual culture. For the first time, the tradition of commercial photographers, whose formal vocabulary had greatly contributed to shaping new representational models in 19th-century Italy, was confronted with innovations in the medium which disclosed heretofore unknown, potentially boundless perspectives, not limited to the scientific domain. Based on these modes of vision and iconic formulas, artists were also stimulated to develop new languages and formulate new problems, which would soon be adopted and reinterpreted by 20th-century avant-gardes.