Photography and Popular Piety in Italy, 1861-1915

• Applicant: Dr. Moritz Lampe
• Subject Area: Art History ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 439411386

With the introduction of photography in the middle of the 19th century, images of saints, reliquaries, or pilgrimage sites became available for the first time as technical images and changed Catholic visual culture in Italy profoundly. The research project investigates the significance of these photographs for the construction of Catholic identity and aims at a historical analysis of the religious, political, and cultural conditions for this epochal change. The study concentrates on three central issues. On the one hand, it will examine which photographic studios operated in this field and which economic and aesthetic strategies they followed in the selection, staging and marketing of their photographs. On the other hand, it will show how the Catholic church discussed the introduction of photography from a theoretical standpoint and how photographs were used in the process of the functional modernization of Catholicism. In addition, the project will exemplify the ways in which these photographs were used in religious, social, and economic actions as ritual objects by charting image archives in Rome and the Vatican. Based on a material culture studies approach, which considers photographs as three-dimensional objects with an individual biography and agency, the project will show that photographs of sacred objects were far more than flat images. In fact, they were also experienced by touch and other sensory means. Following these methodological presumptions, the project is designed to make significant contributions to the fields of photography studies, the history of vernacular piety, and the national history of Italy. Its time frame covers the period from the foundation of the modern Italian state in 1861 to Italy’s entering the First World War in 1915.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants