Futurism & Photography

Futurism touched many art forms, among which photography is the least explored; the Futurists, however, came to consider photography a privileged medium, capable of expressing the dynamism they held so dear. The photographs they produced can be considered as documents of the avant-garde activism of the early part of the twentieth century or emblematic images of the mythology of the Futurist revolution, as well as works of art in their own right. Futurism and Photography considers the innovations of the period from 1909 to 1939, when Futurist photographers such as Arturo and Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Giorgio Riccardo Carmelich, Fortunato Depero, Edmund Kesting, Enrico Pedrotti and Tato experimented with multiple portraits, abstract photography, photomontage and photocollage, as well as reportage that took for its subject-matter those things considered to embody 'modernity' and 'dynamism': dance, sport and the industrial world. This ground-breaking study fills long-standing gaps in the history both of photography and of the avant-garde culture of the twentieth century.