The Photography Section was founded in the early 1970s on the initiative of Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, in parallel with a number of exhibitions held in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Lee Friedlander, 1970, New Photography USA, 1971) and the Library of Congress in Washington (Dorothea Lange, 1972), which was followed by an extensive review on the photography of the Rooseveltian New Deal, (FSA, 1975).
The prints acquired at the LOC in Washington constitute the first important archival collection on photography (over 200. 000 prints of images by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, Jack Delano…), to which were soon added, saved from dispersion, entire archives of important Italian authors: Bruno Stefani, over 4,000 rolls of Leica negatives, over 3,000 autograph prints, the Orlandini of Modena, the Studio Villani of Bologna, to which was soon added the archive of the Ditta Vasari of Rome (over 350,000 plates).
These photographic archives, with an industrial and commercial vocation, contain images datable between 1920 and 1975 of various commissions: large public works, town planning, architectural studios (the Villani and Vasari, for example, were the main photographers for Nervi, Ponti, Moretti and other important designers), works of art often belonging to private collections and therefore not visible except in those reproductions, large industrial groups such as ILVA, Italsider, Dalmine.
Since the 1980s, the collection of photographic archives has continued with the acquisition of photojournalistic archives such as Publifoto (part of the archive of the Milan office and the entire archive of Publifoto Rome) and related authors (Pratelli, Fioroni, Argenta) and other important authors such as Chiara Samugheo, Antonio Sansone, Carlo Cisventi. At the same time, acquisitions of works by contemporary photographers grew, who donated important documentation of their work to the University, finding in the Institution the opportunity for a critical confrontation and a precise cultural collocation of their work. Important nuclei then document the history of Photography in the Avant-garde, including 135 original negatives by Man Ray (probably the largest collection of his negatives outside the Man Ray Trust) and 175 prints by Florence Henri, donated respectively by Galleria Marconi in Milan and Martini and Ronchetti in Genoa.
The donated photographs are catalogued and catalogued, and exhibitions and publications are organised in the series Quaderni del CSAC, later Quaderni del Progetto.
The Photography Section has a Scientific Committee whose members include photographers, scholars, and operators of national level involved in the planning of exhibitions, in the selection of acquisitions, in short, in the cultural policy of that part of the CSAC.
On many occasions, the exhibitions and volumes published are fundamental chapters in the authors’ histories: authors such as Ugo Mulas, Nino Migliori, Luigi Ghirri and Mario Giacomelli had their first ever anthological exhibition/publication.
There is also a strong relationship with teaching: even before the History of Photography and History and Technique of Photography courses were set up at the University, seminars and workshops were held at Quintavalle’s invitation by important authors, including Nino Migliori, Luigi Veronesi, Luigi Ghirri; among the authors holding teaching contracts in the History of Photography are Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Uliano Lucas. The materials of the Photography Section, currently consisting of over 7,500,000 images, are continually the subject of studies, degree theses, the occasion for training courses and interdisciplinary studies, and the subject of loans at national and international exhibitions.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the archive of prints and photographic negatives was placed in the Contrafforti Wing of the Palazzo della Pilotta in an environment specifically designed for their conservation at constant temperature and humidity, and at the end of the decade the CSAC’s entire holdings were placed in the Padiglione Nervi (Ex
The section also preserves 150 antique cameras.
