Through a close analysis of the work of 30 Italian photographers, this interdisciplinary study explores photography's relationship with Italian painting, film, literature and international photography over four decades of radical political and social change in Italy, arguing that photography was a distinctive and powerful cultural force.

Spanning four decades of radical political and social change in Italy, this interdisciplinary study explores photography’s relationship with Italian painting, film, literature, anthropological research and international photography. Evocative and powerful, Italian social documentary photography from the 1930s to the 1960s is a rich source of cultural history, reflecting a time of dramatic change. This book shows, through a wide range of images (some published for the first time) that to fully understand the photography of this period we must take a more expansive view than scholars have applied to date, considering issues of propaganda, aesthetics, religion, national identity and international influences. By setting Italian photography against a backdrop of social documentary and giving it a distinctive place in the global history of photography, this exciting volume of original research is of interest to art historians and scholars of Italian and visual culture studies.