Photographs and subjective representations of Italian emigration to Argentina
Keywords:
photography, image, representations, subjectivities, migrationAbstract
The objective of this work is to identify and analyze the ways in which images and subjective representations are constructed and inscribed in narrative texts related to Italian migration in Argentina, based on their articulation with the photographic code. The selected texts are the novels Emigrati. Studio e racconto (1880-1881) by Antonio Marazzi, Un caffè molto dolce (1996) by Maria Luisa Magagnoli, Oltremare (2007), Vincendo l’ombra (2009) by Mariangela Sedda, Il fioraio di Perón (2009) by Alberto Prunetti, Il cacciatore di ombre. In viaggio con Don Patagonia (2011) by Tito Barbini, the photo-book Roots. Radici (2022) by Bruna Martini and the film Nuovomondo (2006) directed by Emanuele Crialese. The corpus is approached from sociocriticism, imagology and comparative literature for the reconstruction of the cultural subject, the identity representations and the imaginary community and the multiple interrelations between word and photographic image. The study of the connections between literature and photography is based on the proposals of Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Rosalind Krauss, Silvia Albertazzi and Paola Corti, among others. Photography is conceived as a semiotic device that articulates the relationships between subjects, objects, values, and vital, socio-historical, and cultural experiences. The analysis of the textual inscriptions of the photograph considers its plurality of registers: as a theme, as ekphrasis that establishes a double mimesis, as a testimonial and autobiographical document that is modeled as a relic, trace and presence of an absence, in the configuration of a character as photographer or photographed subject, as a discursive strategy and technique and from its representative and narrative autonomy. In this way, it is hoped to outline an analysis of the dialectic between word and photographic image, as systems of expression intertwined in the constitution of the subject in the narration of migratory displacement.
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