“Fotografare Bisanzio” addresses a hitherto unexplored topic, namely Italian archives that hold photographic images relating to the art of Byzantium and the Mediterranean East. As early as the end of the 19th century such collections were started by institutions and individual scholars in the wake of research, missions, and archaeological campaigns. This invaluable heritage offers unique testimony to the afterlife of monuments, the integrity of which has often been altered or lost due to restoration work, natural disasters, and wars. From page to page, from photograph to photograph, the reader is taken on an itinerary that moves across a vast geographical latitude, in the footsteps of prominent Italian and foreign scholars: from the Balkans to Anatolia, from Caucasus to Syria, from Egypt to Italy. In addition to presenting visual repositories of great historical importance, the book draws attention to a more general theme of pressing topicality: the fate of documents on physical supports in the digital age and the need to safeguard them as irreplaceable treasures of cultural memory.
New Publication: ‘Fotografare Bisanzio’ by Antonio Iacobini and Livia Bevilacqua
Medieval Art Research 