Social Exclusion in Photography and Film 1860-2010. The margins of a country are real places - the poor peripheral areas of cities, overseas colonies, 'backward' rural areas, Romani camps, fast-track removal centres and many others.
Curated and with an inaugural lecture by David Forgacs
(Guido and Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò Professor in Contemporary Italian Studies, NYU)
Inaugural Lecture: Italy seen at its margins: visual culture and social exclusion since 1861
The margins of a country are real places - the poor peripheral areas of cities, overseas colonies, 'backward' rural areas, Romani camps, fast-track removal centres and many others - but at the same time they are places that are imagined and produced as margins by particular processes of definition and representation. A place becomes a margin because it is viewed and defined as such from a more powerful and prestigious centre of observation. Those who do the viewing and defining are equipped (depending on the historical period) with notebooks, tape recorders, still cameras, movie cameras or video cameras, and they use these technologies to capture and reproduce images of those on the margins. The power relations inherent in these structures of observation and representation are generally not reversible, or are only partially reversible.
Opening Monday, March 5, 2012 6:00PM
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo'
24 West 12th Street 212 New York
Admission free