Abstract
This chapter analyzes the first of several photobooks that illustrated the reform of psychiatric health care in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s: Luciano D’Alessandro’s 1969 Gli esclusi. In 1967, D’Alessandro was invited by the director of the asylum of Nocera Superiore, Sergio Piro, to document through photography the abysmal conditions of the “total institution” that was the pre-reform mental hospital. D’Alessandro first published a small selection of photos, in Popular Photography Italiana (1967), which he then expanded in Gli esclusi. This chapter claims that, in the evolution between the two publications, we can read the complex and multilayered notion of alienation that informed the work of reform, especially that of one of the most famous figures associated with it, Franco Basaglia. By analyzing D’Alessandro’s Gli esclusi through the notion of alienation, this chapter lets what Sekula calls the conditions of “readability” of the photographic message emerge.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsChange history
10 October 2019
The book was inadvertently published with the given name and family name of the author differently abbreviated in all the chapters as A. S. Tarabochia; whereas it has been updated as A. Sforza Tarabochia.
Notes
- 1.
The hard copy of the book has never been reprinted. A free online scanned version of the book was available until D’Alessandro’s death in 2016. A cached version of the scanned book is available through Archive.org’s “Wayback Machine.” Piro’s presentation is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20090207170253/http://www.lucianodalessandro.com/esclusi/prespiro.html, accessed on August 3, 2018, while the scanned photobook is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20090205174019fw_/http://lucianodalessandro.com:80/esclusi/esclus01.html, accessed on August 3, 2018. The original printed photobook does not have page numbers. For ease of citation I have employed a custom page numbering whereby the first page with a photo is numbered 1. The pages follow sequentially.
- 2.
In 1968 Basaglia invited the photographer Carla Cerati to take pictures in Gorizia and other asylums. Cerati in turn asked Gianni Berengo Gardin to accompany her. A selection of their pictures was initially published by Einaudi in 1969, some months after Gli esclusi, in the photobook Morire di classe: La condizione manicomiale fotografata, edited by Basaglia and his wife, Franco Ongaro (Basaglia and Ongaro 1969).
References
Babini, Valeria. 2009. Liberi tutti. Manicomi e psichiatri in Italia: Una storia del novecento. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Basaglia, Franco. (1953) 2017. Il mondo dell’incomprensibile schizofrenico attraverso la Daseinanalyse: Presentazione di un caso clinico. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 47–70. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
———. (1964) 2017. La distruzione dell’ospedale psichiatrico come luogo di istituzionalizzazione. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 261–270. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
———. (1965a) 2017. Corpo, sguardo e silenzio: L’enigma della soggettività in psichiatria. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 301–14. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
———. (1965b) 2017. La “Comunità Terapeutica” come base in un servizio psichiatrico: Realtà e prospettive. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 271–290. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
———. (1965c) 2017. Potere ed istituzionalizzazione: L’esclusione come categoria socio-psichiatrica. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 291–300. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
———. (1966) 2017. L’ideologia del corpo come espressività nevrotica: Le nevrosi neurasteniche. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 345–332. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
———. (1975) 2017. Introduzione ad Asylums. In Basaglia, Franco. Scritti 1953–1980, 533–544. Milan: ilSaggiatore.
Basaglia, Franco, and Franca Ongaro Basaglia, eds. (1969) 2008. Morire di classe: La condizione manicomiale fotografata da Carla Cerati e Gianni Berengo Gardin. Trieste: Editore Duemilauno Agenzia Sociale.
Carli, Maddalena. 2014. Testimonianze oculari: L’immagine fotografica e l’abolizione dell’istituzione manicomiale in Italia. Memoria e ricerca 47: 99–113.
Cesareo, Giovanni. 1981. Follia ed informazione nella stampa italiana. In Inventario di una psichiatria, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 29. Milan: Electa.
D’Alessandro, Luciano. 1967. Il mondo degli esclusi. Popular Photography Italiana 117: 51–54.
D’Alessandro, Luciano, and Sergio Piro. 1969. Gli esclusi: Fotoreportage da un’istituzione totale. Milan: Il Diaframma.
D’Autilia, Gabriele. 2012. Storia della fotografia in Italia: Dal 1839 a oggi. Turin: Einaudi.
Foot, John. 2015. Photography and Radical Psychiatry in Italy in the 1960s: The Case of the Photobook Morire di classe (1969). History of Psychiatry 26 (1): 19–35.
Forgacs, David. 2014. Italy’s Margins: Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2008. Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973–1974. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Picador.
Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books.
Grassi. 1969. L’obiettivo penetra nel mondo degli “esclusi:” Eccezionale inchiesta nella “fossa dei serpenti”. Roma, March 11.
Manzoli, Federica. 2004. La follia per immagini: Storia fotografica della fine dei manicomi. JCOM 3 (2): 1–7.
Piro, Sergio. 1967. Fotografia e alienità. Popular Photography Italiana 117: 55–88.
Russo, Antonella. 2011. Storia culturale della fotografica italiana: Dal neorealismo al postmoderno. Turin: Einaudi.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1978. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Pocket Books.
Schinaia, Cosimo. 2004. Fotografia e psichiatria. In Storia d’Italia. Annali 20: L’immagine fotografica 1945–2000, ed. Uliano Lucas, 459–476. Turin: Einaudi.
Sekula, Allen. 1982. On the Invention of Photographic Meaning. In Thinking Photography, ed. Victor Burgin, 84–109. Basingstoke/London: Macmillan.
Stefanile, Mario. 1969. Un reportage fotografico di Luciano D’Alessandro. Il Mattino, March 6.
Sforza Tarabochia, Alvise. 2014. Lacking Subjects and the Subject of Lack: Basaglia and Lacan. In Lacan and Philosophy: The New Generation, ed. Lorenzo Chiesa, 221–238. Melbourne: re.Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sforza Tarabochia, A. (2019). Mental, Social, and Visual Alienation in D’Alessandro’s Photography. In: Diazzi, A., Sforza Tarabochia, A. (eds) The Years of Alienation in Italy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15150-8_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15150-8_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15149-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15150-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)