Carlo Arturo Quintavalle on Photography, Territory, and History

Carlo Arturo Quintavalle (born 1936), professor emeritus at the University of Parma and founder of the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC), discusses photography's relational nature in an interview. He argues that photography is inherently tied to territory—both physical and mental—and carries anthropological value. Quintavalle, who introduced US authorial photography to Italy (including Farm Security Administration images and Lee Friedlander's work) through his dialogue with MoMA's John Szarkowski, stresses that photography cannot be understood without art history. In 1979, he contributed to the six-volume Enciclopedia pratica per fotografare, which had a print run of 300,000 copies and featured portfolios of young Italian photographers, many later participating in Luigi Ghirri's 1984 Viaggio in Italia. Quintavalle cites Mario Cresci's 1960s work photographing families in Tricarico holding ancestral portraits as an example of photography intertwining memory, genealogy, and representation. He maintains that photography documents ways of living and thinking but remains understudied.