Lindsay Harris will open the Rome Art History Network 2014–15 conference series with a talk on the newest chapter of her current book, Photography and the Myths of Primitivism in Italy (1904–1954). A contribution to the history of photography and modern Italian studies, her book explores the myths of primitivism—collective fantasies about original purity as an antidote to the iniquities of modern life, or shared anxieties about persistent atavism—that inspired Italians and foreigners alike to turn to photography to research, represent, and interpret the impact of modernization on Italian society in the first half of the twentieth century. In her talk, she will explore the northern Italian writer Arnaldo Cervesato’s use of photographs in his 1910 publication, Latina Tellus, to condemn living conditions in Rome’s periphery as “more primitive than in the darkest Africa,” an approach he adapted from European models.

Lindsay Harris is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome.

The lecture will be given in Italian.