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conference "Identity and photographic representation. A meeting between the gaze on the Orient and the image of Italy"

When
From 3 November 2026 to 3 November 2026

Where

Giuliano Briganti Library and Photographic Archive

Tuesday 3 November at 17.30, Santa Maria della Scala organizes in the premises of the Briganti Library a two-voice conference on the relationship between photography, identity and representation, with contributions from Professor Nicola Labanca, full professor of Contemporary History at the University of Siena, and Edoardo Maggi, SABAP official for the provinces of Siena, Grosseto and Arezzo.

After the institutional greetings by the Director Chiara Valdambrini, The two talks, in dialogue with the exhibition The EAST AND ITS FACES. The photographic portrait of the Zangaki Brothers, will offer the opportunity to reflect on the role of photography in the construction of collective identities and on the relationship between images, power and the representation of otherness.

With the contribution The Colonial Mediterranean and the Orientalist Gaze, Nicola Labanca will explore the political and cultural dynamics of the Mediterranean between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through the emblematic case of Egypt, he will reflect on Europe's gaze toward the colonized territories and on the representations of the peoples subjected to Western domination, up to the processes of decolonization and the gradual reduction of European centrality.

Edoardo Maggi, with the intervention «Italians, good people»: social and environmental portraits of the Bel Paese from the 19th century to the present day, will instead retrace the ways in which Italy, its inhabitants and its landscapes have been represented in photography, particularly foreign photography. A journey through images that have contributed to building the imaginary of «Italianness», between observation of reality and cultural stereotypes.

Locations

Giuliano Briganti Library and Photographic Archive

The portion of the museum complex called Palazzo Squarcialupi is the result of the actions of  restoration and definition of the spaces that, starting from the mid-14th century, were intended for the reception of women and abandoned children. 

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