Panel: Fotografiste: Locating Women Photographers in Pre- and Post-Unification Italy (1840s–1920s)

Presentation Type

Event

Start Date

8-3-2026 5:48 AM

Description

Panelists: Agnese Ghezzi, Nicoletta Leonardi, Beatrice Lattanzi

This panel investigates the presence, practices, and professional strategies of women photographers active in Italy from the 1840s to the early twentieth century, spanning the period before and after political unification. The papers examine how women engaged with photography within a fragmented peninsula shaped by multiple sovereignties, uneven legal frameworks, and transnational cultural exchanges. Rather than treating women photographers as isolated exceptions, the panel foregrounds collaboration, family enterprises, mobility, and entrepreneurial agency as key conditions through which photographic authorship was produced and negotiated. This panel stems from the PRIN 2022 PNRR project “Fotografiste. Women in Photography From Italian Archives (1839–1939)”, promoted by IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (PI Prof. Linda Bertelli) and the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan (Co-PI Prof. Nicoletta Leonardi).

Itinerant Daguerreotypists in Pre-Unification Italy: Josephine Dubray and Elise Link Brosy (1840–1860) / Agnese Ghezzi This paper explores the trajectories of two itinerant female daguerreotypists active in the Italian peninsula before its political unification in 1861, a period marked by shifting borders, multiple sovereignties and plurilingual contexts. These cases—Josephine Dubray and Elise Link Brosy—illuminate the entrepreneurship and transnational networks of early women photographers. In 1844, the Gazzetta di Firenze introduced Dubray, originally from Paris and described as a “pupil of Monsieur Daguerre,” praising the veracity of her portraiture. From Genoa, she traveled across central Italy, establishing temporary studios in Parma (Duchy of Parma), Bologna and Cesena (Papal States), and Florence (Grand Duchy of Tuscany). Her advertisements highlight both her technical skills and the authority she derived from her direct association with Daguerre. A contrasting case is that of Elise Link Brosy, who worked both independently and alongside her husband, the German photographer Ferdinand Brosy, across northern Italy, then part of the Austrian Empire. From the late 1840s, “Fotografia Brosy” operated in different cities of the Regno Lombardo Veneto—Trento, Bressanone, Verona, Ferrara, Trieste, Venice, Udine—and in the 1850s Elise established a studio in Innsbruck. Her career demonstrates how female practitioners navigated collaboration and family enterprises while contributing to the professionalization of photography in border regions. Foregrounding these two neglected figures, this paper interrogates the gendered dimensions of mobility, authorship, and recognition in the early history of photography, while reflecting on the limits of a “national canon” in the fragmented political and cultural landscape of pre-unification Italy, where such a framework proves inadequate to capture the transnational, multilingual realities and shifting legal conditions that shaped women’s photographic practice.

The Hidden Partner: Gerardine Bate, Photography at the Vatican, and Transnational Feminism in the Italian Risorgimento / Nicoletta Leonardi This paper re-examines the history of Robert Macpherson (1814–1872), long celebrated as a pioneering photographer of antiquities in Rome, by foregrounding the decisive role of his wife, Gerardine Bate (1820–1878). Far from being the product of Robert’s individual genius, the Macpherson studio emerges as a collaborative enterprise sustained by Bate’s intellectual formation, cultural capital, and artistic labour. Through her aunt Anna Jameson—art historian, essayist, and proto-feminist—Bate was connected to the Langham Place circle in London, one of the most important centres of mid-Victorian feminism. These ties linked her to a transnational network of women reformers, writers, and activists, which she carried into her life in Rome. It was through these connections that the Macphersons were able to access patrons, publicity channels, and even the Vatican Museums, where Robert obtained rare permissions to photograph antiquities— an opportunity unimaginable for women in the Papal States, where professional agency was structurally denied. After Robert’s death in 1872, Bate could not maintain the photographic business under her own name, but she continued her intellectual and political engagements. She collaborated with Jessie White Mario, the English journalist and activist who became one of the most influential chroniclers of the Italian Risorgimento. This partnership placed Bate at the intersection of feminist reform, political struggle, and cultural exchange in nineteenth-century Europe. By situating Gerardine Bate within the restrictive condition of women in the Vatican State and within the wider framework of transnational feminist circles, this paper highlights how gendered and collaborative structures underpinned photographic authorship. It reframes the Macpherson enterprise not as the isolated achievement of a male pioneer, but as a feminist-inflected transnational cultural practice embedded in the social, political, and intellectual transformations of the Risorgimento.

A Studio of Her Own. The Photographic Enterprise of Maria Spes Bartoli (1888–1981) / Beatrice Lattanzi This paper offers a critical perspective on Maria Spes Bartoli’s role as a pioneering woman entrepreneur in early twentieth-century central Italy. Drawing on diaries, photographs, and photographic studio imprints, it highlights her key role in managing and sustaining her family’s photography business — particularly during the First World War, a pivotal period that led to the studio’s official registration under her own name in 1924. Born in 1888 into a culturally active family in Senigallia, Bartoli was introduced to photography at a young age by her father, Beniamino, a science teacher and passionate amateur photographer who shared his technical expertise with both his son and daughters. After the family relocated to Tolentino in 1904, Maria Spes became deeply involved in running the photographic studio formally registered to her brother Giuseppe and based in their family house. During the war years, however, with Giuseppe away at the front, she assumed full responsibility for the business, facing all stages of the photographic process and responding to the high wartime demand for services from both soldiers and civilians. Her diaries from this period reveal a resourceful and determined woman who not only documented her technical and creative work, but also recorded fees, appointments, client interactions, and customer feedback. Her photographic practice encompassed a wide range of subjects — from aristocratic families to rural peasants — and extended beyond the studio: she frequently travelled to neighbouring towns and villages to carry out commissioned portraits, reflecting a dynamic and socially diverse engagement with her clientele. By analysing these writings alongside her photographic output, this paper offers rare insight into the daily operations of a female-run photographic studio during a time of crisis, highlighting Bartoli’s professional confidence and keen awareness of her own value as a photographer and entrepreneur, while also exploring the networks, practices, and representational strategies that shaped her work.

Speaker Biographies

Agnese Ghezzi is Assistant Professor (RTD-a) in Contemporary History at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Her research interests include the relationships between photographic practices, ethnography, and colonialism in Italy, as well as the analysis and valorisation of photo archives and women's history. She has been a fellow at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, the PHRC (De Montfort University, Leicester), the KHI in Florence.

Nicoletta Leonardi is Professor of Art History and the History of Photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where she is responsible for the historical photographic collection. Her research adopts a systemic perspective on photography, examining it not as a self-contained medium but as embedded within broader networks of technologies, material practices, visual imaginaries, and archival infrastructures. She is the author of monographs on American landscape photography and photography and materiality in Italy, and co-editor of Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century (Penn State University Press, 2018). She is currently Associate PI of the PRIN PNRR 2022 project Fotografiste: Women in Photography from Italian Archives, 1839–1939.

Beatrice Lattanzi is a PhD student in Cultural Systems at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, focusing on photographic archives. With professional experience in both Italy and the UK, she has collaborated with major cultural institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Biennial of Female Photography in Mantua.

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Mar 8th, 5:48 AM

Panel: Fotografiste: Locating Women Photographers in Pre- and Post-Unification Italy (1840s–1920s)

Panelists: Agnese Ghezzi, Nicoletta Leonardi, Beatrice Lattanzi

This panel investigates the presence, practices, and professional strategies of women photographers active in Italy from the 1840s to the early twentieth century, spanning the period before and after political unification. The papers examine how women engaged with photography within a fragmented peninsula shaped by multiple sovereignties, uneven legal frameworks, and transnational cultural exchanges. Rather than treating women photographers as isolated exceptions, the panel foregrounds collaboration, family enterprises, mobility, and entrepreneurial agency as key conditions through which photographic authorship was produced and negotiated. This panel stems from the PRIN 2022 PNRR project “Fotografiste. Women in Photography From Italian Archives (1839–1939)”, promoted by IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca (PI Prof. Linda Bertelli) and the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan (Co-PI Prof. Nicoletta Leonardi).

Itinerant Daguerreotypists in Pre-Unification Italy: Josephine Dubray and Elise Link Brosy (1840–1860) / Agnese Ghezzi This paper explores the trajectories of two itinerant female daguerreotypists active in the Italian peninsula before its political unification in 1861, a period marked by shifting borders, multiple sovereignties and plurilingual contexts. These cases—Josephine Dubray and Elise Link Brosy—illuminate the entrepreneurship and transnational networks of early women photographers. In 1844, the Gazzetta di Firenze introduced Dubray, originally from Paris and described as a “pupil of Monsieur Daguerre,” praising the veracity of her portraiture. From Genoa, she traveled across central Italy, establishing temporary studios in Parma (Duchy of Parma), Bologna and Cesena (Papal States), and Florence (Grand Duchy of Tuscany). Her advertisements highlight both her technical skills and the authority she derived from her direct association with Daguerre. A contrasting case is that of Elise Link Brosy, who worked both independently and alongside her husband, the German photographer Ferdinand Brosy, across northern Italy, then part of the Austrian Empire. From the late 1840s, “Fotografia Brosy” operated in different cities of the Regno Lombardo Veneto—Trento, Bressanone, Verona, Ferrara, Trieste, Venice, Udine—and in the 1850s Elise established a studio in Innsbruck. Her career demonstrates how female practitioners navigated collaboration and family enterprises while contributing to the professionalization of photography in border regions. Foregrounding these two neglected figures, this paper interrogates the gendered dimensions of mobility, authorship, and recognition in the early history of photography, while reflecting on the limits of a “national canon” in the fragmented political and cultural landscape of pre-unification Italy, where such a framework proves inadequate to capture the transnational, multilingual realities and shifting legal conditions that shaped women’s photographic practice.

The Hidden Partner: Gerardine Bate, Photography at the Vatican, and Transnational Feminism in the Italian Risorgimento / Nicoletta Leonardi This paper re-examines the history of Robert Macpherson (1814–1872), long celebrated as a pioneering photographer of antiquities in Rome, by foregrounding the decisive role of his wife, Gerardine Bate (1820–1878). Far from being the product of Robert’s individual genius, the Macpherson studio emerges as a collaborative enterprise sustained by Bate’s intellectual formation, cultural capital, and artistic labour. Through her aunt Anna Jameson—art historian, essayist, and proto-feminist—Bate was connected to the Langham Place circle in London, one of the most important centres of mid-Victorian feminism. These ties linked her to a transnational network of women reformers, writers, and activists, which she carried into her life in Rome. It was through these connections that the Macphersons were able to access patrons, publicity channels, and even the Vatican Museums, where Robert obtained rare permissions to photograph antiquities— an opportunity unimaginable for women in the Papal States, where professional agency was structurally denied. After Robert’s death in 1872, Bate could not maintain the photographic business under her own name, but she continued her intellectual and political engagements. She collaborated with Jessie White Mario, the English journalist and activist who became one of the most influential chroniclers of the Italian Risorgimento. This partnership placed Bate at the intersection of feminist reform, political struggle, and cultural exchange in nineteenth-century Europe. By situating Gerardine Bate within the restrictive condition of women in the Vatican State and within the wider framework of transnational feminist circles, this paper highlights how gendered and collaborative structures underpinned photographic authorship. It reframes the Macpherson enterprise not as the isolated achievement of a male pioneer, but as a feminist-inflected transnational cultural practice embedded in the social, political, and intellectual transformations of the Risorgimento.

A Studio of Her Own. The Photographic Enterprise of Maria Spes Bartoli (1888–1981) / Beatrice Lattanzi This paper offers a critical perspective on Maria Spes Bartoli’s role as a pioneering woman entrepreneur in early twentieth-century central Italy. Drawing on diaries, photographs, and photographic studio imprints, it highlights her key role in managing and sustaining her family’s photography business — particularly during the First World War, a pivotal period that led to the studio’s official registration under her own name in 1924. Born in 1888 into a culturally active family in Senigallia, Bartoli was introduced to photography at a young age by her father, Beniamino, a science teacher and passionate amateur photographer who shared his technical expertise with both his son and daughters. After the family relocated to Tolentino in 1904, Maria Spes became deeply involved in running the photographic studio formally registered to her brother Giuseppe and based in their family house. During the war years, however, with Giuseppe away at the front, she assumed full responsibility for the business, facing all stages of the photographic process and responding to the high wartime demand for services from both soldiers and civilians. Her diaries from this period reveal a resourceful and determined woman who not only documented her technical and creative work, but also recorded fees, appointments, client interactions, and customer feedback. Her photographic practice encompassed a wide range of subjects — from aristocratic families to rural peasants — and extended beyond the studio: she frequently travelled to neighbouring towns and villages to carry out commissioned portraits, reflecting a dynamic and socially diverse engagement with her clientele. By analysing these writings alongside her photographic output, this paper offers rare insight into the daily operations of a female-run photographic studio during a time of crisis, highlighting Bartoli’s professional confidence and keen awareness of her own value as a photographer and entrepreneur, while also exploring the networks, practices, and representational strategies that shaped her work.

Speaker Biographies

Agnese Ghezzi is Assistant Professor (RTD-a) in Contemporary History at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Her research interests include the relationships between photographic practices, ethnography, and colonialism in Italy, as well as the analysis and valorisation of photo archives and women's history. She has been a fellow at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, the PHRC (De Montfort University, Leicester), the KHI in Florence.

Nicoletta Leonardi is Professor of Art History and the History of Photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where she is responsible for the historical photographic collection. Her research adopts a systemic perspective on photography, examining it not as a self-contained medium but as embedded within broader networks of technologies, material practices, visual imaginaries, and archival infrastructures. She is the author of monographs on American landscape photography and photography and materiality in Italy, and co-editor of Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century (Penn State University Press, 2018). She is currently Associate PI of the PRIN PNRR 2022 project Fotografiste: Women in Photography from Italian Archives, 1839–1939.

Beatrice Lattanzi is a PhD student in Cultural Systems at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, focusing on photographic archives. With professional experience in both Italy and the UK, she has collaborated with major cultural institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Biennial of Female Photography in Mantua.