TEXTURES OF LIGHT: Achille Bologna Photographer

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After decades of neglect, this book brings back to life the artwork of Achille Bologna, one of the most eminent figures of art photography in Italy between the two World Wars. Its compilation has been possible by the recovery of the Bologna archive, which suffered severe losses over the years. First it was decimated by the bombing of Turin during WWII and, subsequently, thousands of the remaining works were lost under unfortunate circumstances. However, the current archive still holds about seven hundred prints by the artist, a selection of which has been reproduced in this volume.

The introductory essay, by Maria Antonella Pelizzari, traces Bologna’s artistic journey from the early 1910s to the 1940s, when he ended his photographic production. It covers Bologna’s evolution from a pictorial, intimist manner to a modernist style which placed him at the vanguard of the “new photography.” The essay also includes Bologna’s activities as a promoter of photographic art, the co-director of the influential magazine, Il Corriere Fotografico, a member of the editorial board of the annual Luci ed Ombre, the author of the seminal book, Come si fotografa oggi, and one of the organizers of the annual International Salons of Photographic Art, considered to be “the most intriguing, eclectic, lively, and cosmopolitan exhibitions of photography that have ever been seen in our country,” (according to the Corriere Fotografico May 1958).

This volume includes more than 200 photographs which cover the arc of Bologna’s production over thirty years.

Praise

“Bologna was among the few in Italy who advocated the use of the expressive potential of the photographic medium according to the developments of modern world photography, which started with Stieglitz in New York at the beginning of the century with the idea of ‘straight photography.’… Among the most daring photographers were Bricarelli and Bologna, aimed to radically simplify the image structure, and to contain it in a few signs within geometrical shapes and expanded tones.” —Italo Zannier, Luci ed Ombre: Gli annuari della fotografia artistica italiana (Alinari, 1987).

“Bologna and his colleagues emphasized the object in the shape which more eloquently expressed its structure, and used the photographic medium to obtain the maximum accentuation.”      —Ute Eskildsen, “Photography and the Neue Sachlichkeit Movement,” in David Mellor, Germany, the New Photography, 1927-33: documents and essays (London, 1978).

“In Italy, the most important theoretician of the New Photography is Achille Bologna, who in 1935 published the seminal book Come si fotografa oggi.” ―Quoted in Culturalismi.com. On the occasion of the exhibition “Inquadrare il moderno: architettura e fotografia in Italia, 1926-1965,” Maxxi Museo, Roma, 2011.

“Textures of Light is a beautiful volume providing insight into one-of-a-kind photography collection from the Achille Bologna archive. The carefully researched introduction, by renowned scholar Maria Antonella Pelizzari, presents for the first time an organic view of Bologna’s pioneering artistic approach to photography at a momentous time for Italy’s presence on the international political and cultural scene. Bologna’s important albeit overlooked work is restored to life in this book by a superb display of photographs enhanced by engaging editorial choices. For my work at the Library of Congress, I was made privy to the Bologna archive some years ago. I gazed at those treasures in wonder of how much beauty and meaning were enshrined in those photographs, wishing that they were part of the Library’s unparalleled Italian collections.”—Lucia Alma Wolf, Italian Specialist Librarian, Library of Congress