Over the last twenty years, there has been a huge increase of interest in twentieth-century Italian photography on the part of specialists and museum and gallery directors abroad. However, until the mid-1990s no methodically complete and reliable studies on the subject existed, which made it impossible to examine and appreciate the field as a whole. In 1999 the Istituto Superiore per la Storia della Fotografia (Institute for the History of Photography), was founded in order to fill this gap.
The Institute was created primarily as a centre for research and advanced studies.
Thanks to the collaboration of various university teachers and internationally renowned specialists, an extensive research programme was drawn up, focussed initially on acquiring and building up archive material and the study, cataloguing and publishing of previously unpublished material as documentary information.
Over the following years, the results of this research have been published in a series of monographic volumes, and archive and correspondence catalogues – an extremely costly enterprise that no commercial publisher could conceivably have undertaken. From a technical point of view, particular care has been devoted to the printing of these volumes: various typographic techniques were experimented with in order to establish a new protocol of standard procedures for reproducing the photographs. The creation of these publications constitutes the second of the Institute’s fundamental missions, namely the production of photographic art books.
The third mission to which the Institute devotes its energies is the organisation of photographic exhibitions. Here the care taken over providing contextual information in presentation
and through catalogues makes it possible for the findings of research published in its specialist volumes to be transmitted to the general public.
As well as its research activities, publishing output and the organisation of exhibitions, the Institute has also dedicated itself since its founding to the creation of a collection of vintage prints, with the intention that one day they will form the centrepiece of the first museum in Italy devoted entirely to Italian photography.
The original negatives of some of these prints no longer exist, which makes them particularly precious pieces. Many were originally printed for exhibitions or special occasions, and on the reverse side of all the prints there are rubber stamps, notes or indications of participation in international competitions.
Nevertheless, the most unique thing about this collection – and it is worth stressing just how much this sets it apart from any other collection – is the way that each and every collected work is the result of a precise and methodical choice. The few other collections existing in Italy are basically a mishmash of works consisting of occasional donations or the remains of archives from defunct magazines. This collection, by contrast, is the outcome of an organic and systematic project. Rather than being chosen at random, each work has its own functional significance within the overall context of the collection, which in turn is a functional reflection of the Institute’s research into historical photography and the general interpretation which it has attempted to offer.
In this sense, the importance of the collection transcends the value of the individual photographs: its uniqueness lies in its overall significance and the project on which it is based.