[Commlist] call for papers Conference "Local Shots. Stage photography in the cinema of the Italian regions"

Call for papers.
"Local Shots. Stage photography and Italian cinema"

December 15-16, 2023
University of Salento (Italy)


Keynote speakers: Greta De Lazzaris (photographer), Barbara Grespi 
(Università degli Studi di Milano Statale)


Stage photography originated as a support to film productions, with 
promotional or documentary purposes. Since the origins of film 
industrial production, the set is the object of the action of the set 
photographer, whose work is used for the realization of paratextual 
iconographic apparatuses (playbill, poster), along with other artistic 
forms such as illustration. Having exhausted its promotional function in 
the lifespan of the film and its distribution, however, set photography 
continues to have a documentary function, retaining relevant information 
about filmmaking practices at the aesthetic, technological and 
organizational levels, as it also very often reproduces the backstage of 
a set. Set photography also enables the reconstruction of other 
phenomena such as stardom and authorialism. There is, however, a 
further, important spillover of stage photography to social reality: it 
is the set of representational practices that have been called 
placetelling by geographer Fabio Pollice. The need for territorial 
storytelling is all the more significant in the current system of the 
Italian film industry, which for the past thirty years or so has 
experienced a process of marked production decentralization. Since the 
late 1990s, in fact, Italian cinema has shifted from its nerve center 
(the Capital) to the regions, constituting a polycentric system that 
maximizes the role of territories. Stage photography, in this sense, has 
followed the vicissitudes of this territorialization of Italian cinema, 
producing a great quantity of images that, having exhausted its strictly 
promotional function, now ask to be archived, analyzed, studied, 
interpreted.
Almost always excluded from the histories of photography, set 
photography has developed original forms and styles-sometimes becoming 
stereotypes-that demand to be compared with parallel typologies such as 
photojournalism or fashion photography. The aim of the conference is 
therefore to bring together scholars from scientific fields with 
converging interests to take stock of the current reality of the 
scene-photographic heritage of the Italian regions and its management, 
and to propose technological solutions for the census, protection and 
enhancement of the works.
In particular, both the theories and practices of stage photography and 
the tools, methods, and technologies of archiving this heritage, which 
has been affected (like photography in general) by the digital 
revolution, posing new questions of preservation and restoration, will 
be the subject of the conference. The conference, in this sense, intends 
to urge the scientific community to think about evolved tools for 
Digital Cultural Heritage in the framework of Digital Humanities, with a 
specific focus devoted to: tools for the integration, archiving and 
consultation of the photographic documentation of Italian cinema; tools 
for the interrogation of the content information of digital photographic 
resources and the direct interaction between users and resources, such 
as, for example, advanced digital recognition systems functional for the 
consultation and interactive use of digital collections of scene 
photographs; tools for the long-term preservation of digital data 
(LTDP), i.e., metadata protocols that enable the reconstruction of the 
life process of digital resources; tools for the dissemination of 
cultural heritage, meaning both platforms where data are represented and 
organized in such a way as to be directly available to entities and 
institutions responsible for the protection and enhancement of cultural 
heritage, in accordance with sub-trajectory 1. 5 of the Three-Year 
Action Plan of the National Cultural Heritage Technology Cluster, 
three-year period 2023-2025.
Thus, the conference will allow to begin to have an overall vision and 
an initial mapping of the consistency of the sceno-photographic 
heritage; identify the main lines of research of future projects on the 
protection, enjoyment and enhancement of the works; determine the set of 
tools and methods most appropriate for the approach to the objects of 
study; and establish the most urgent interventions to be promoted with 
respect to the sceno-photographic heritage.

Among the possible declinations of the conference themes:
- Styles, techniques, figurative conventions and forms of stage photography
- Profiles of scenic photographers and photographers
- Sodalities between filmmakers and still photographers
- Relationships between still photography and filmic discourse (camera 
direction, directing)
- Theories of stage photography (aesthetics, semiotics, visual sociology)
- Editorial works of stage photography (volumes, catalogs)
- Archives of stage photography (existing, constituting, potential)
- Tools and methods for the preservation, cataloguing and enjoyment of 
the photographic heritage of cinema
- Stage photography and storytelling of territories
- Stage photography in related fields of application (theater, dance, music)

Proposals (max 2000 characters), accompanied by a brief biographical 
note, should be sent by July 15, 2023 to (luca.bandirali /at/ unisalento.it) 
<mailto:(luca.bandirali /at/ unisalento.it)> and a response will be received by 
July 30, 2023.

The conference is co-funded by the Technological Innovation in Cultural 
Heritage (TICHE) Foundation and has been selected among the projects and 
initiatives related to UNESCO's celebrations of the 50th anniversary of 
the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and 
Natural Heritage (1972) and the 20th years of the Convention on the 
Promotion and Protection of the Intangible Heritage (2003).

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