© 2018 Donata Panizza ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© 2018 Donata Panizza ALL RIGHTS RESERVED OVEREXPOSING FLORENCE: JOURNEYS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY, CINEMA, TOURISM, AND URBAN SPACE by DONATA PANIZZA A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Italian Written under the direction of Professor Rhiannon Noel Welch And approved by ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________ ________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey OCTOBER, 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Overexposing Florence: Journeys through Photography, Cinema, Tourism, and Urban Space by DONATA PANIZZA Dissertation Director Rhiannon Noel Welch This dissertation examines the many ways in which urban form and visual media interact in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-centuries Florence. More in detail, this work analyzes photographs of Florence’s medieval and Renaissance heritage by the Alinari Brothers atelier (1852- 1890), and then retraces these photographs’ relationship to contemporary visual culture – namely through representations of Florence in international cinema, art photography, and the guidebook – as well as to the city’s actual structure. Unlike previous scholarship, my research places the Alinari Brothers’ photographs in the context of the enigmatic processes of urban modernization that took place in Florence throughout the 19th century, changing its medieval structure into that of a modern city and the capital of newly unified Italy from 1865 to 1871. The Alinari photographs’ tension between the establishment of the myth of Florence as the cradle of the Renaissance and an uneasy attitude towards modernization, both cherished and feared, produced a multi-layered city portrait, which raises questions about crucial issues such as urban heritage preservation, mass tourism, (de)industrialization, social segregation, and real estate speculation.
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