They Did Not Stop at Eboli / Au-delà d’Eboli Edited by / Éditrices Giovanna Hendel, Carole Naggar & Karin Priem Appearances – Studies in Visual Research Edited by Tim Allender, Inés Dussel, Ian Grosvenor, Karin Priem Vol. 1 They Did Not Stop at Eboli: UNESCO and the Campaign against Illiteracy in a Reportage by David “Chim” Seymour and Texts by Carlo Levi (1950) Au-delà d’Eboli : l’UNESCO et la campagne contre l’analphabétisme, dans un reportage de David « Chim » Seymour et des textes de Carlo Levi (1950) Edited by / Éditrices Giovanna Hendel, Carole Naggar & Karin Priem Published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France, and Walter De Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, D-10785 Berlin, Germany. © UNESCO and De Gruyter 2019 ISBN 978-3-11-065163-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-065559-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-065175-1 UNESCO ISBN 978-92-3-000084-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019951949 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo/). By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository (www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbyncsa-en). The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. Text editing and proofreading / Rédaction du texte et relecture: Manuela Thurner, Arielle Bekono & Laurence Maufort Bergamo Book concept / Concept du livre: Giovanna Hendel, Carole Naggar, Karin Priem Printed in Germany by CPI books GmbH, Leck / Imprimé en Allemagne par CPI books GmbH, Leck Typesetting /Typographie : bsix information exchange GmbH, Braunschweig Cover image / Photographie de couverture: David “Chim” Seymour/Magnum Photos/Agentur Focus www.davidseymour.com www.degruyter.com Contents / Sommaire Preface by the Series Editors Avant-propos des éditrices et éditeurs de la série 1 Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director General Foreword Audrey Azoulay, Directrice générale de l’UNESCO Préface 5 Editorial Note Note éditoriale 9 Part I: OUT OF CONTEXT / HORS CONTEXTE Close-Ups Gros plans 15 List of Illustrations Liste des illustrations 45 Part II: IN CONTEXT / EN CONTEXTE The Album as an Archival Object L’album comme objet d’archives 51 Texte et légendes de « Chim » 133 Textual Sources Sources écrites 147 Paul Lengrand Italy Fights the Battle against Illiteracy Paul Lengrand L’Italie mène la bataille contre l’analphabétisme 149 VI Contents / Sommaire Letter from Paul Lengrand to UNESCO, 1952 Lettre de Paul Lengrand à l’UNESCO, 1952 156 Five Letters from David “Chim” Seymour to Carlo Levi, 1950–1952 Cinq lettres de David « Chim » Seymour à Carlo Levi, 1950–1952 160 Carlo Levi, “Southern Italy Fights the Battle against Illiteracy,” UNESCO Courier 5, no. 3 (1952) Carlo Levi : L’Italie du Sud mène une dure bataille contre l’analphabétisme. In : Le Courrier de l’UNESCO 5, no 3 (1952) 170 Part III: REFLECTIONS / RÉFLEXIONS Giovanna Hendel UNESCO’s Archival Collections: A Rich Source for Telling the Gripping Story of the Fight against Illiteracy in Southern Italy 181 Giovanna Hendel Les collections d’archives de l’UNESCO : une source précieuse pour raconter l’histoire passionnante de la lutte contre l’analphabétisme dans le sud de l’Italie 189 Juri Meda The “Agony of the School” in Southern Italy in the Images of Italian Photojournalists, 1940s–1950s 198 Juri Meda «L’agonie de l’école » en Italie du sud dans les photographies de photojournalistes italiens, des années 40 aux années 50 221 Carole Naggar Carlo Levi and Chim: Ethics, Empathy, and Politics – A Journey into the Mezzogiorno 245 Carole Naggar Carlo Levi et Chim : éthique, empathie et politique – un voyage dans le Mezzogiorno 254 Contents / Sommaire VII Karin Priem David Seymour’s Album on the Fight against Illiteracy in Calabria as a Tool of Mediatization: Material Traces of Editing and Visual Storytelling 263 Karin Priem L’album de David Seymour sur la lutte contre l’analphabétisme en Calabre en tant qu’outil de médiatisation : traces matérielles de la rédaction et de la narration visuelle 275 Acknowledgements / Remerciements 288 Contributors / Auteurs 290 Picture Credits / Crédits photographiques 296 Text Credits / Copyrights des textes 297 Preface by the Series Editors This book series entitled Appearances: Studies in Visual Research emerged from a long-standing collaboration among its editors. In addition to several publications in the field, they have successfully organized a number of well-received panels and activities at several ISCHE (International Standing Conference for the History of Education) conferences, which have focused on a broad range of themes and meth- odological issues around photography and film as historical sources and archival objects. Images today are everywhere, and anyone can try their hand at being a docu- mentary photographer. But how do we make sense of this visual revolution in the long history of using visual material to communicate? Recently, historians and so- cial scientists have begun to work at the intersection of visual research, media his- tory, and material studies. Their research has focused in particular on the fact that images themselves have a history, or social biography. Images are reproduced, cir- culated, and consumed in ways that could not be predicted at the time of their origi- nal production. Images are included and inscribed in different contexts; they move from cam- eras, canvas, papers to albums, plaques, museums, frames, boxes, walls, cards, books, journals, popular magazines, catalogues, pamphlets, and almost any imagi- nable surface, including the screens that are deployed by digital and social media. Visual technologies as material practices imply an impetus for reproduction and dissemination where images assume a hermeneutical role. Images are reproducible and mobile objects that never cease to reach out to audiences and gather a large variety of intertwined relationships and meanings over time. The material and social qualities of images are therefore inseparable; both refer to processes of meaning- making in chains of reproduction, remediation, and re-contextualization, with images assuming active roles as connectors and communicators. Images raise questions about intermedia relationships, the life and death of images, technologies of reproduction, hybrid media, and media and humans as meaning-making collectives – also in the digital age. This stimulates reflection on what has been inscribed by whom, when, and where in the (digital) archive, and how a particular visual memory has been produced, defied, challenged, and trans- formed. The aim of the book series is to initiate and encourage debates and exchanges on images and films as complex material and social objects. This objective will be achieved by regarding images as objects to think with, by problematizing them as signs or traces of complex entanglements with both the past and the present. The first volume in this series is the result of a successful collaboration among one of the series editors, a researcher at the UNESCO Archives, and a photography Open Access. © 2019 Karin Priem, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110655599-202 2 Preface by the Series Editors historian, and testifies to the rich and entangled history of the development of archives, educational projects, visual research, and media policies of humanitarian organizations. Esch-sur-Alzette, October 4, 2019 On behalf of the series editors, Karin Priem Avant-propos des éditrices et éditeurs de la série Cette série de livres intitulée Appearances: Studies in Visual Research est née d’une collaboration de longue date entre ses éditeurs. En plus de plusieurs publications dans le domaine, ils ont organisé avec succès un grand nombre de panels et d’acti- vités très appréciés à plusieurs conférences ISCHE (International Standing Confe- rence for the History of Education), des évènements qui ont porté sur un large éven- tail de thèmes et de questions méthodologiques autour de la photographie et du cinéma en tant que sources historiques et objets d’archives. De nos jours, les images sont partout, et chacun peut s’essayer au métier de photographe documentaire. Mais comment donnons-nous un sens à cette révolution visuelle dans la longue histoire de l’utilisation du matériel visuel comme outil de communication ? Récemment, les historiens et les spécialistes en sciences sociales ont commencé à travailler sur l’intersection de la recherche visuelle, de l’histoire des médias et des études matérielles. Leurs recherches se sont particulièrement concentrées sur le fait que les images elles-mêmes ont une histoire ou une biogra- phie sociale. Les images sont reproduites, diffusées et consommées d’une manière qui ne pouvait être prédite au moment de leur production originelle. Les images sont incluses et inscrites dans différents contextes ; elles passent des caméras, des toiles et des papiers aux albums, plaques, musées, cadres, boîtes, murs, cartes, livres, revues, magazines populaires, catalogues, brochures, et à pres- que toutes les surfaces imaginables, y compris les écrans qui sont déployés par les médias numériques et les réseaux sociaux. Les technologies visuelles en tant que pratiques matérielles impliquent une impulsion pour la reproduction et la diffusion où les images assument un rôle herméneutique.