Matera in posa: The Photographic Self-Portrait of a Southern-Italian City, 1900–1920

ABSTRACT

Photography has played an important role in framing popular perceptions of Matera. Scholarship has focused on its representation following 1945. Yet the fact that a photographic portrait of Matera existed before this time is often overlooked. Photographs of the city pre-dating 1920 were mostly published as postcards by local entrepreneurs. This article analyzes a selection of these in the context of evolving representations of Matera and Basilicata in the early twentieth century. Providing insight into the aesthetic and socio-cultural construction of this important aspect of the city’s early photographic portrait, it emphasises that postcards issued by local enterprises offered a perspective on Matera and Basilicata from the publisher’s point of view. They complemented a less prejudiced and sometimes positive portrayal of the region – emerging in a variety of texts, photographs, and public events – that modified narratives often narrowly focused on describing it as impoverished, backward, and isolated.

KEYWORDS:

• Matera
• Sassi
• Basilicata
• Mezzogiorno
• photography
• postcards

Introduction

The southern-Italian city of Matera has seen a transformation of its image and enjoyed increasing international visibility during the past three decades. In 2014, along with Plovdiv, it was selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2019. The situation was very different when Matera attracted national and international attention following the Second World War and the publication of Carlo Levi’s Cristo si è fermato a Eboli.¹ Labelled a ‘national disgrace’ because of living conditions in the Sassi – the two valleys that constitute part of its urban fabric – the city was construed as a symbol of ‘everything that was wrong with Italy and wrong with the South’ and became a political, social, and architectural laboratory for addressing its problems.² Matera also drew the interest of Italian and foreign scholars and journalists who studied and reported on its peasant society. Prominent among them was the team of researchers led by Friedrich G. Friedmann in the early 1950s. Funded by the United Nations, their work aimed to find solutions to the poor living conditions of Sassi residents while preserving their culture.³

Extensive photographic representation of Matera by Italian, European, and American photographers also began at this time and often reinforced a picture of backwardness and privation. Many travelled to the city ‘with the intention of circulating their images through illustrated magazines’.⁴ Among them was Marjory Collins who photographed it in 1950, while documenting reconstruction efforts for the U.S. State Department. The images she published in Epoca in Italy and in Collier’s, Life, and Pageant ‘illustrate the distinctly un-modern qualities of Matera’s cave dwellings’ in the Sassi; the accompanying captions direct attention ‘to indications of poverty, hardship, or poor hygiene’.⁵

Lindsay Harris has recently stated that ‘nothing has done more to frame perceptions and, in turn, shape the fate of Matera than photography’.⁶ Given the attention it received from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s, the city’s ‘nascent iconography’ is seen as taking shape at this time.⁷ This iconography is complex, has evolved over decades, and is not limited to the Sassi, yet the fact that a photographic portrait of Matera existed long before the post-war period is often overlooked. It was not as extensive, and probably did not reach as large an audience as that produced after 1945. Moreover, there is much less information about the creators, functions, and dissemination of photographs predating 1920. While the Mezzogiorno was not ignored by Italian photographic firms in the early twentieth century, scholars emphasise the comparative lack of a photographic record of Basilicata and its ‘vera e propria esclusione’ from the large, national repertories.⁸

In fact, Matera was photographed many times during this period, and the majority of published images survive as postcards. In Italy, cards depicting the length and breadth of the peninsula were issued by firms operating nationally, such as Alterocca at Terni. The collection of the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione indicates that many were also published by local entrepreneurs in all regions.⁹ An important producer in Basilicata before the First World War was Francesco Garramone who operated a publishing house in Potenza. Postcards published by Garramone and entrepreneurs throughout the South depicted its built and natural environment, along with its population and material culture. These represented the Mezzogiorno to Italians and were part of the photographic imaging of Italy that contributed to the creation of a national rhetoric.

This article argues that postcards picturing Basilicata merit attention as a form of popular imagery that contributed to its construction as an object of knowledge. It indicates that a photographic portrait of Matera existed before the 1940s and provides an account of its nature. Of the postcards published before 1920, the largest number are attributed to Giacinto Calculli (1884–1958), a bookseller and stationer located in the city. Along with those issued by other local entrepreneurs, these constitute the most comprehensive photographic portrait of Matera published in the early twentieth century.

Postcards are complex objects bearing images and text ‘across boundaries of class, gender, nationality, and race’; they prompt an examination of the ‘complex relations among subjects, producers, senders, and receivers’.¹⁰ Yet recreating their workings is complicated by the fact that, in the early years of their production, the majority were not posted. Instead, they were given as gifts, used for making appointments, and collected as souvenirs before the existence of a large market for cameras. Consequently, much research focuses on their images to address ‘the source and authorship of the photograph, contexts of its production, and the evolution of phrases and captions’.¹¹

This article analyzes the early photographic portrait of Matera by examining a selection of Calculli’s postcards. It adopts an approach which emphasises that ‘the image itself functioned as a message’.¹² Italian scholarship employs postcards to document the development of cities and analyse the construction of urban iconography and local identity.¹³ Popular publications use them to narrate local history.¹⁴ One would expect critical examination of their images to be essential to claims regarding their documentary function. However, early examples depicting Matera have not yet been investigated as culturally constructed products of the time and place of their publication. The ways in which the form and content of their images was mediated by conventions of photographic depiction and ‘regimes of representation’ shaped by social and political context have not been analysed.¹⁵ Nor have they been scrutinised as opening a perspective on the Mezzogiorno from the viewpoint of their publishers.

This article brings these interpretative considerations to Calculli’s postcards: it analyses the construction of their images; proposes a reading of their socio-cultural function; and thus provides insights into an important aspect of the early photographic depiction of Matera. Calculli emerges as a pioneer in the creation of a postcard portrait that emphasises what is historically and culturally noteworthy about Matera while ignoring unpleasant social realities. It was not ‘the capital of the peasants’ as described by Levi, nor was it the city scavata nella roccia as contemporary representation often assert.¹⁶ Instead, Calculli’s cards offer a carefully constructed display of a small city that is neither isolated nor impoverished, but is rather architecturally, culturally, and socially developed, and historically linked to the rest of Italy.

Postcards comprised a significant visual component of the story that Matera created about itself; they expressed an understanding and experience of the city shared by members of Calculli’s social class. To ensure healthy sales, local publishers issued images of subjects commonly considered significant.¹⁷ The depiction of Matera’s churches, civic institutions, and public squares on postcards was in keeping with the urban iconography presented on countless examples published across Europe. Indeed it was usual, even in large centres, to appeal to a local market that shared an identification with a particular locale.¹⁸ The postcards analysed here were published at a time when Matera was not the capital of Basilicata; it was difficult to reach by road, having only been connected by rail to Bari in 1915. Moreover, it was largely absent from travel literature. This suggests that it was not frequented by a significant number of non-residents and that the market for postcards was composed mostly of local consumers. Yet appealing to a collective understanding of what typified Matera meant selective representation and an image ‘inflected by a politics of class’ and civic privilege.¹⁹ These early postcards offered a carefully contrived portrait of a city built and governed by an historic upper, and more recently emergent middle class.

The collection and exchange of postcards was a middle-class phenomenon before 1914, and was directly related to the growth of commodity culture.²⁰ Postcards followed in the wake of paintings, prints, and maps as a medium for representing communities.²¹ These small, inexpensive objects permitted ‘the democratization’ of the activity of collecting images of one’s city.²² Matera’s middle class was relatively small–numbering approximately 4,000 people in 1901 – but sizeable enough to constitute a market for postcards.²³ It included landowners engaged in agriculture; individuals involved in the food and construction industries; merchants; lawyers; doctors; and engineers.²⁴ The activity of this class propelled the ways in which Matera, along with Potenza, began ‘un processo di superamento dei loro caratteri strutturali di “città rurali”’.²⁵ This involved land improvement; better instruments of credit; expansion of non-agricultural production; and the growth of the food industry. Water courses running through the Sassi were filled between 1908 and 1926 with the aid of state financing. A road to Altamura and Ferrandina was inaugurated in 1909 and, prior to the First World War, electricity was employed to light some of the city’s streets. The Ferrovie Calabro-Lucane connected Matera to Altamura and Bari in 1915 and, by 1917, the city boasted a cinema.

As a book seller and member of the middle class, Calculli probably took an interest in, and was even proud of Matera’s history, identity, and development. Postcards offered an inexpensive means to sell an attractive portrait to a like-minded clientele. While some were collected in albums, others were posted to correspondents throughout Italy. It is also important to note that the image of an urbane southern city, first appearing on postcards, was relayed to a wider Italian audience through media with a national distribution. This was especially the case following the creation of the Province of Matera in 1927 with the city as its capital. It featured in travel guides published by the Touring Club Italiano; popular magazines including Le cento città d’Italia illustrate; and even in advertising. A critical component of these representations was the use of photographs first issued as postcards by Calculli and other local publishers.

In this way, small local enterprises participated in the commercialisation of an image of Matera that contrasted depictions marking it as socially, economically, and culturally marginal and that, on the contrary, construed it not simply as picturesque but as historically and culturally important. Presenting the city as squarely within the nation’s frontiers, postcards also articulated a local understanding of Basilicata. Especially when posted beyond its borders, they complemented a less prejudiced, more circumspect, and sometimes positive portrayal of the region – emerging in a variety of texts, photographs, and public events – that modified narratives and public statements which often narrowly focused on describing it as backward, impoverished, and isolated.

Saluti da Basilicata: Postcards from Italy’s ‘Margins’

Giacinto Calculli was one of several brothers who made their living as merchants in Matera. His bookshop was located in the heart of the city on Corso Umberto I where it joins what was known as the Largo della Fontana or Largo Plebiscito. Maintaining left-wing political sympathies, Calculli was managing director of the socialist periodical Il Sasso that was published in the city from 1914 to 1916 with the aim of connecting local and national politics.²⁶ Yet published information about Calculli is limited and consists of personal reminiscences. It is, therefore, extremely difficult to reconstruct his political views in detail and connect them to the images he published.

The production and sale of postcards was a common venture for shopkeepers across Europe. Merchants ‘would hire a photographer, often one attached to a company that printed postcards, to take shots of the neighborhood, send the photos to be produced as postcards, and then sell them from the shop to the people in the neighborhood’.²⁷ Many represented small urban centres and places of interest principally to locals. Calculli published postcards from as early as 1900 until at least 1940. A more limited number depicting Matera bear the imprint of other local publishers including Emanuele Loschiano, Giuseppe Latorre, V. Maggi, Francesco Pizzilli, and Giovanni Vezzoso. A handful were published in the late 1890s by the Stabilimento di Eliotipia Molfese of Torino.

It is unlikely that Calculli took the photographs on the many cards that provide no indication of the photographer. However, it is reasonable to assume that he made decisions concerning the views he believed typified Matera. This resulted in a selective portrait with photographs structured both visually and by captions to propose preferred readings of certain images and impose constraints on others.²⁸ Of course, postcard images reduce their subjects to external appearances, separating them from social and cultural contexts.²⁹ Guided by a ‘positivist taxonomic imperative’ typical of middle-class culture at the time, and in keeping with postcard images of cities across Europe, Calculli’s cards condensed Matera ‘to a series of discrete units’ that were ‘easily manipulated and readily consumed’.³⁰

Yet what must be understood is that these examples comprise only a small number of the many representing Basilicata in the early years of the twentieth century. Postcards are an important example of the assertion of local identity that was given renewed impetus by national unification. In Basilicata, as elsewhere, this expressed itself principally in folkloric, anthropological, and historical writing.³¹ The latter took the form of local histories and surveys of the entire region, especially Giacomo Racioppi’s history published in 1889.³² The bibliography compiled in 1914 by the director of the Provincial Library in Potenza comprises 785 entries listing publications and manuscripts directly and indirectly concerned with Basilicata, many published locally after 1861.³³ Postcards constituted an important photographic dimension of this interest in representing markers of local identity.

In keeping with many depicting the South, some appealed to a taste for ‘the quaintness of dying traditional societies’ and trade in stereotypes about the backward nature of the region.³⁴ But many, especially issued by local entrepreneurs, portray Basilicata’s towns, historic architecture, civic and ecclesiastical institutions, markets, modern infrastructure, and some of its smallest and most remote communities. Their publishers include Fratelli Ferrara in Melfi; Antonio Albano in Moliterno; Vincenzo Garramone in Potenza; G. Moretti in Rionero; Giuseppe Mazzarone in Tricarico; and A. Rana in Venosa. Of those preserved in the Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici della Basilicata, most bear no imprint. There are cards picturing Acerenza; Barile; Bernalda; Episcopia; Ferrandina; Irsina; Melfi; Muro Lucano; Pescopagano; Pisticci; Policoro; Potenza; S. Severino Lucano; Stigliano; and Tricarico. They depict castles, churches, public squares, fountains, and panoramic views of their chosen locale. Most record what is historically important, yet a focus on the time-worn aspects, and the adoption of scenic viewpoints suggests many were intended to appeal to a taste for the picturesque.

With just over 17,000 inhabitants in 1901, it is not surprising that Matera was depicted on postcards published locally. In so doing, Calculli and others created the image of a city not entirely unlike Bari, Catania, Messina, Naples, and Palermo – southern urban centres, featured on numerous postcards, that possessed ‘an illustrious cultural heritage’ which ‘could easily be added to the nation’s glories’.³⁵

Evolving Visions of Basilicata and Matera

Calculli’s portraits of Matera were some of the many evolving representations of the city and region. Depictions of the Mezzogiorno generated in central and northern Italy were often negative. This was a part of nation building that involved ‘the marking out of some groups of people and places as marginal in relation to the nation’s core groups and places’.³⁶ Scholarly studies, travel writing, and journalism sometimes employed a ‘forceful rhetoric of North versus South’ and a ‘tenacious catalogue of stereotypes’ to define the former against the latter in a phenomenon described as ‘orientalism in one country’.³⁷

With respect to Basilicata, government inquiries, scholarship, and newspaper reporting sustained the image of a remote, desolate, socially, and culturally backward region. Accounts ‘of scholars, social scientists, and travelers, as well as official statistics, reflected a grim and often condescending indication of what life was like’.³⁸ Cinquanta anni di storia italiana, published to celebrate the nation’s fiftieth anniversary, described Basilicata as a desolate land ‘denudata dai suoi boschi, impoverita dai debiti, dalla crescente diminuzione dei suoi armenti e da una più crescente emigrazione dei suoi lavoratori’.³⁹ In 1902, the Neapolitan newspaper, Il Pungolo, pictured Matera’s peasant residents as living in a type of ‘semplicità primordiale, imbevuta di rusticità, diffidente e malevola, per il brutale isolamento in cui vive’.⁴⁰

This image of an underdeveloped region was projected internationally. Reporting on Prime Minister Zanardelli’s tour of Basilicata in September 1902, The Sphere, published in London, printed an illustration of him crossing the Agri River in an ox cart with the caption ‘Signor Zanardelli’s Unconventional Progress’.⁴¹ Additionally, ‘descriptions of the harsh realities of the region abound’ in foreign travel writing.⁴² With respect to Matera, English, French, and German examples afforded it less attention from the 1890s and often emphasised its isolation.⁴³ By 1910, it was commonly overlooked.⁴⁴

Yet in Italy, Basilicata became the subject of increased national political attention, published commentary, and photographic representation that ruptured ‘il silenzio, l’oscurità, l’oblio che sembrano condannarla e isolarla’.⁴⁵ Zanardelli’s tour resulted in the Special Law for Basilicata of 1904. The region was studied as part of the Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini nelle province meridionali e nella Sicilia initiated in 1906, and discussed in publications reaching a literate public. It was represented to the nation and the world at the International Exhibition mounted in Milan in 1906, and the Exhibition of Italian Ethnography organised in Rome in 1911 as part of the International Exposition celebrating the nation’s fiftieth anniversary. An important element of this attention was the portrayal of the region as being in dialogue with ‘l’immagine complessiva del paese’.⁴⁶

Basilicata made a forceful entry into national politics in December 1901 when its problems were brought into sharp relief due to the calls to Rome for help.⁴⁷ Speaking to Parliament, Zanardelli emphasised that in Basilicata ‘there was an absolute absence of flourishing urban centers, of any manufacturing industry, of strong agricultural production, all of the things which created and maintain public and private prosperity’.⁴⁸ His tour was chronicled in the Italian and foreign press and was photographed.⁴⁹ These images include depictions of several communities along with posed and candid shots of their peasant inhabitants.⁵⁰ Some were published in the popular media including La Tribuna illustrata.⁵¹ A few were reproduced on postcards by firms including Alterocca, and Fototipia Danesi in Rome and featured the Prime Minister in an ox cart. By emphasising the difficulties faced by Zanardelli in traversing the region, they highlighted its backward nature.

The Special Law of 1904 failed to produce many hoped-for results, and its implementation has often been negatively assessed. Yet it had positive effects in terms of infrastructure projects, financial incentives to development, and the renewal of Basilicata’s capital, Potenza.⁵² For a brief period before the First World War, it also increased the region’s national visibility as prominent public figures – especially Francesco Saverio Nitti in his role as Minister of Agriculture, Industry, and Trade – turned their attention to Basilicata with ideas for solving its problems.

In the context of promised state-intervention, members of the local governing classes promoted their region and articulated a modernising vision of its productive capacity. Initiatives explored utilising oil reserves in the Agri Valley, employing the river to generate electric power, and improving agriculture.⁵³ This image of a region rich in natural resources and economic potential was presented to a national and international audience at the International Exhibition in Milan in 1906 as municipalities and entrepreneurs organised to highlight its agricultural and industrial achievements.⁵⁴ There are also examples of ‘un radicale rovesciamento di prospettiva’ among meridionalisti concerning Basilicata’s economic potential.⁵⁵ Describing it as a ‘scrigno di autentici tesori’ offering enormous opportunities, Francesco Perrone engaged in a ‘capovolgimento semantico’, challenging established images.⁵⁶ Luigi Fiorini advanced the idea of transforming Basilicata through a ‘rivoluzione agraria’ driven by science and new technologies.⁵⁷ Mario Buffa envisioned the modernisation of the territories through which the Agri River flowed and harnessing its waters for electricity serving agriculture, industry, and civil society.⁵⁸

This vision reached a wider audience through the pages, for example, of Nuova Antologia in which Cesare Cagli, a civil servant in the Ministry of Public Works, published three articles in 1910.⁵⁹ Cagli provided a circumspect portrait acknowledging Basilicata’s problems but envisioning more productive farming and industry facilitated by better communication networks. The thirty-six photographs illustrating his text offer a favourable image. Panoramas of Potenza, Lagonegro, Melfi, and Rionero in Vulture could be of small cities anywhere in Italy. Posed photographs of peasants accompany candid images that are ethnographic in nature and picture peasant existence as similar to that in all regions. Photographs of construction undertaken to consolidate Acerenza, and of modern farmhouses, suggest a region productively engaged with modernising forces. A positive image of Basilicata was also presented by Giuseppe De Lorenzo in Venosa e la Regione di Vulture (La Terra D’Orazio) published in 1906. Its 121 photographs picture the landscape, Roman ruins, medieval castles, and cathedrals. Those of Venosa and Melfi depict them as developed urban centres. The images present a region rich in history, culture, art, and architecture which emphasised that Basilicata’s geography and history were particularly ‘compless[e] e interessant[i]’ in comparison to other areas of southern Italy.⁶⁰

Photographs of Basilicata were also published by the Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini. A technical report treating Calabria and Basilicata, published in 1909, includes 282 images with 19 picturing the latter.⁶¹ While recording the backward state of agriculture, they do not indulge in a clichéd emphasis on peasant misery nor a romanticisation of pastoral life. Instead, the photographs contributed to ethnological knowledge fostering a more accurate understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics of Basilicata.⁶² The report prepared the work of the parliamentary committee which published its findings in 1910.⁶³ This includes 143 photographs of Basilicata and Calabria, with 52 picturing the former. Most present the region as untouched by modernity but serve to ‘capovolgere una rappresentazione fortemente stereotipata – quella della povertà del Mezzogiorno – e a modellare una nuova – quella dell’ingente presenza di risorse naturali’.⁶⁴ What appears an iconography of archaism is transmuted into one of economic potential.⁶⁵

Contemporaneous with these modifications of Basilicata’s image, Calculli’s postcards depict its largest city as developed, well-appointed, and historically important. This portrayal had several precedents. Following its elevation to capital of Basilicata in 1663, Matera was ‘recorded in histories and chronicles as being a prosperous city with fine food and resources’.⁶⁶ In 1703, Giovanni Battista Pacichelli offered an admiring description in Il Regno di Napoli in prospettiva stating that the city boasted many palazzi and magnificent churches.⁶⁷ In the middle of the century, Giuseppe Antonini described it as home to many ‘distinguished’ and prosperous citizens.⁶⁸ Accounts from the nineteenth century often describe the ancient origin and eventful history of Matera.⁶⁹ This emphasis, and a focus on its notable families, is found especially in the work of local chroniclers. In his Note Storiche sulla Città di Matera e sulle sue Famiglie Nobili, Giuseppe Gattini described it as a centre of substantial commerce boasting good hotels; cafes; pharmacies; and shops selling books, maps, photographs, clothing, and foodstuffs.⁷⁰

Calculli’s postcards were also preceded by pictorial representations. A schematised etching of Matera by Francesco Cassiano De Silva was included by Pacichelli in his work.⁷¹ A copper engraving, influenced by De Silva’s image, was published about 1762 by Thomas Salmon.⁷² Both offer panoramas that flatten the cityscape and employ formulas for the representation of its major structures. The intention, if not to accurately illustrate their subject, is to present an image befitting a provincial capital.

Calculli’s portraits present a city with historic and noteworthy architecture. Yet it was not only local chroniclers who wrote about and depicted Matera’s medieval churches.⁷³ The French art historian Émile Bertaux described and illustrated the cathedral and the church of San Giovanni in his study of the art of the Mezzogiorno of 1904.⁷⁴ Commentary in the popular Italian media, including La Domenica del Corriere and La Tribuna illustrata, also emphasised the historical and architectural significance of Matera.⁷⁵ In 1915, the Touring Club Italiano described it as ‘una interessantisima città di costruzione medioevale’.⁷⁶ Matera also attracted national and international attention because of the prehistoric finds made by Domenico Ridola whose work emphasised the archaeological importance of the area around the city.

Yet there were also many negative depictions of Matera in circulation. Living conditions in the Sassi were denounced by national deputies from Basilicata at the end of the nineteenth century and, following peasant protests in 1902, the Neapolitan newspaper, Il Pungolo, published a damning description. Upon reaching Matera, the author encountered a ‘quadro straziante e desolante’. In a city ‘bizzarramente costruita sui fianchi di una collina, senza quasi alcun contatto con la civiltà’, he found a population that he defined as ‘analfabeta e superstiziosa’ living in ‘case fetide, senza aria e senza luce, dove esseri umani, asini e maiali dormono in promiscuità orribile’.⁷⁷

It was especially following Zanardelli’s visit to Matera that politicians ‘fixated’ on its ‘troglodyte lifestyle’.⁷⁸ Speaking in Potenza in September 1902, the Prime Minister described the city as follows: ‘5/6 della populazione abitano in tuguri scavati della roccia […] in cui i contadini non vivono ma, a mo’ di vermi brulicano […] nella promiscuità innominabile di uomini e bestie, respirando aure pestilenziali.’⁷⁹ In the report of the Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini, Francesco Saverio Nitti stated: ‘non abbiamo durante il nostro viaggio veduto spettacolo più orribile delle abitazioni dei contadini di Matera’. He described these as ‘veri covi trogloditici’ resembling the ‘abitazioni selvaggi di antichi progenitori’ and was surprised that ‘spetaccoli così orribili possano durare’.⁸⁰

Saluti da Matera: Postcard Portraits

Of the postcards Calculli issued before 1920, some offer panoramas of the city that pictured, and occasionally foregrounded, Matera’s natural setting. One presents a view from the south photographed by V. Marsilio (Figure 1). Printed in black and white, it bears the caption Matera – Panorama da Mezzogiorno on the verso. The photograph pictures the Sasso Caveoso with the cathedral and Cività – the historical nucleus of the city constructed on the promontory rising between the valleys – visible in the background. This is a striking image of Matera perched on the precipice of La Gravina and emphasising the intimate relation between natural and built environment. A considerable amount of its composition is devoted to topography such that Matera seems the uppermost geological feature of the landscape. This reinforces the perception of a city and region characterised by little separation between nature and culture, its habitations uniquely adapted to its geography.

Figure 1. Matera – Panorama da Mezzogiorno. Giacinto Calculli. Author’s collection.

In keeping with panoramas of other communities in Basilicata, Calculli’s postcards do not simply document their subject. Their photographs are shot from scenic viewpoints to capture attractive vistas. Distance was required to achieve this. By this time, the Sassi had become a peasant ghetto and Matera appears on this card as a jumble of mostly vernacular, unsophisticated structures set into the tufa with no concern for rational planning. Yet given the photograph’s expansive field of vision, shot from an elevated viewpoint at a considerable distance from its subject, it does not provide sufficient detail to strike the viewer primarily with an impression of urban and social degradation. There is no indication of subterranean dwellings, and any sense of unhygienic congestion is negated by the expansive sky which contributes to a dramatic, picturesque vista composed of an intricate interplay of form, light, and shadow.

Implicitly and explicitly describing Matera as picturesque was not unusual at this time and can be traced at least to Pacichelli in the early eighteenth century. Writing in the Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari in 1898, Gaetano Amalfi described Matera as both ‘pittoresco e curioso’.⁸¹ It was occasionally presented as picturesque in early-twentieth-century travel guides and, following its elevation to provincial capital in 1927, the city was regularly described in these terms.⁸²

Another postcard bears the caption Panorama dal Castello (Figure 2). The never-completed castle was begun in 1501, on the bluffs at the western edge of Matera’s historic centre, by Count Giovanni Carlo Tramontano, who was granted the city as a feudal holding by King Ferdinand II of Naples. The photograph does not picture the castle but looks to the south-east and offers a partial view of the quarters constructed on the Piano. The Sassi are not evident and the city, at a distance from the viewer, is only partially visible in the expansive landscape that frames the background. Two men dressed in middle-class attire occupy either side of the foreground. One is holding a piece of paper or notebook and may be engaged in studying and even sketching the vista. His presence informs the viewer’s response to the image, the composition and subject of which imply a contemplative mode of looking for the sake of topographical knowledge and/or aesthetic pleasure.

Figure 2. Panorama dal Castello. Giacinto Calculli. Author’s collection.

Although the natural setting is pronounced, Matera appears not unlike other small urban centres in Italy: a rural municipality composed of regular, if unsophisticated, architectural structures arranged in an ordered urban plan. The exclusion of the Sassi and a focus on the Piano and Cività was a common way of picturing Matera on panoramic postcards before and after 1920. These commonly offer vistas from the south-west and, although not the case in this example, include a view of the cathedral rising above the skyline.

Calculli also offered particular views of the quarters of the city constructed on the Piano. These were home to Matera’s civic institutions; its most important ecclesiastical foundations; much of its commercial infrastructure; and the residential quarters of its upper and middle classes. One of these postcards bears the caption Matera – Largo Plebiscito and pictures the city’s largest public square (Figure 3). Created in the late nineteenth century by filling upper levels of the Sasso Barisano, it was rechristened Piazza Vittorio Veneto after the First World War. The formatting of the card suggests it was issued in 1905 or shortly thereafter. Calculli published at least one other before 1920 with an image of the Largo from the same vantage point.

Figure 3. Matera – Largo Plebiscito. Giacinto Calculli. Author’s collection.

Postcards commonly pictured public squares. The photograph published by Calculli looks north from the Largo della Fontana across the large open space of the Largo Plebiscito and into Via XX Settembre. The latter courses into the background and creates, along with the compositional structure of the entire image, a sense of recession in depth. This adds to the impression of a spacious urban environment, as does the fact that the photograph was taken from an elevated vantage point. The Largo is animated, in the left foreground, by a small group of people. While too indistinct to offer much information about themselves, they create the impression of a lively urban space.

The large, symmetrical façade of the Convento dell’Annunziata frames the left middle ground. Completed in 1747 for Dominican nuns, it housed the Palazzo di Giustizia and the Regia Scuola Normale Promiscua at the time this photograph was taken. In the right background, a portion of the Palazzo del Governo is visible. If not architecturally noteworthy, these structures help create a formal symmetry and regularity that organises the composition in an aesthetically pleasing way. More significantly, they create the sense of a rationally planned, orderly, and well-appointed city.

This image of Matera is sustained by a group of Calculli’s postcards depicting its civic institutions, churches, public spaces, and infrastructure in more focused detail. The Convento dell’Annunziata is the sole subject of two other cards on which its function as the Palazzo di Giustizia and Regia Scuola Normale Promiscua is indicated by captions. The fact it was pictured on at least two cards by other publishers, both with similar inscriptions, suggests that the structure and its institutions were considered important features of Matera. The same is true of the town hall and the seventeenth-century Palazzo Lanfranchi which housed the Regio Liceo Ginnasio Emanuele Duni and the Convitto Nazionale at the time. Both were depicted on postcards issued by Calculli and others before 1910. Public fountains were also important pieces of urban infrastructure that symbolised rational planning and modernisation and often featured on postcards. Known as the Fontana Ferdinandea in honour of Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies, Matera’s principal fountain was completed in 1832 on the site of an earlier construction from the sixteenth century. Calculli published at least two postcards depicting it shortly after 1900.

The views he offered of the Palazzo Lanfranchi are particularly interesting for the way in which they present the image of a city both historically significant and socially and culturally modern (Figure 4). The building was constructed between 1668 and 1672 to house the diocesan seminary and the Church of the Madonna del Carmine. Calculli’s two postcards featuring the Palazzo were accompanied by one depicting the city’s grandest Baroque church, San Francesco d’Assisi (completed in 1751), and another picturing the interior of the cathedral that was redecorated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These images emphasise the degree of architectural sophistication achieved in Matera during the early modern period and the Church’s role in fostering this. With its façade designed in a Baroque aesthetic, the Palazzo Lanfranchi indicates the city’s engagement with major historical currents in culture, architecture, and urban planning as, following its elevation to capital of Basilicata in 1663, it was developed by private, public, and ecclesiastical building projects.

Figure 4. R. Liceo Ginnasio E. Duni. Giacinto Calculli. Author’s collection.

This image of a historically and architecturally important city, engaged with greater cultural and political currents, is promoted by other postcards issued by Calculli. Two depict the exterior of the cathedral that was completed in the Puglian Romanesque style in 1270. One pictures the Castello Tramontano and suggests Matera, with its Aragonese fortification similar to that at Taranto, was closely integrated, politically and culturally, with the Kingdom of Naples. Another depicts the so-called Torre Metellana at the northwestern edge of the Cività. The claim that it was a surviving feature of Roman fortifications was made as early as the sixteenth century.⁸³ Recent research suggests the tower was constructed by the Normans who took control of Matera in the eleventh century.⁸⁴ Nonetheless, its attribution to the Roman period at the time Calculli published this postcard served to ennoble the city’s origins.

Yet it is also interesting that Calculli’s depiction of the Palazzo Lanfranchi is identified on both cards as the R. Liceo Ginnasio E. Duni with one adding e Convitto Nazionale. Matera’s schools and public entities were often housed in repurposed ecclesiastical buildings and the viewer of Calculli’s postcards is directed to see the Palazzo in terms of its contemporaneous civic function. Their photographs present the image of a city boasting institutions typical of a socially advanced and culturally modern community. Although their visual fields are limited, they promote an impression similar to that offered by the postcard picturing the Largo Plebiscito. The viewer looks along Via Liceo – appearing as a small piazza framed on the left by the Palazzo Del Salvatore – to the façade of the Palazzo Lanfranchi. The rectilinear and restrained sophistication of both structures, delimiting the regular space onto which they front, creates the impression of a rationally planned, even sophisticated urban environment.

In sum, Calculli’s postcards depicting the Cività and the city on the Piano foreground the architectural and urban sophistication of Matera achieved especially in the medieval and early modern periods. They present a city of historical importance that developed culturally, socially, and politically as part of the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. They also promote the image of a contemporary urban centre with schools and public institutions. Continuing and appealing to a local tradition of describing Matera in these terms, and in the context of increased interest in the assertion of local identity, Calculli’s is a proud self-portrait of what the city’s upper and middle classes had achieved. It contrasted representations highlighting the degradation of the Sassi and descriptions of Basilicata that presented it as lacking flourishing urban centres.

Furthermore, his postcards disputed an image of the Mezzogiorno promoted especially by L’Illustrazione Italiana. This popular journal often discussed the South in terms of its picturesque landscapes to the detriment of engagement with its history, cities, and culture.⁸⁵ There was also an ‘active depreciation of the cultural traditions, history, and monuments of the south’ relative to the ‘valorization of those of the center-north’ which were seen as integral to the creation of a national identity.⁸⁶ Postcards issued by Calculli and local publishers throughout the Mezzogiorno countered the neglect of southern cities and culture that had trouble gaining ‘positive recognition’ in popular media and the founding myths of the nation.⁸⁷

Some of Calculli’s cards feature photographs of the Sassi that are more focused than his panoramas. These are engaging, appealing images of an integral part of the city’s urban fabric that long-featured in descriptions of it and was becoming – especially for external observers – evermore characteristic of Matera as a whole. With their vistas onto a seemingly time-worn and irregular architectural medley, Calculli’s views do not foreground urban and social degradation, nor do they depict cave dwellings. Instead, while documenting their vernacular architecture and complex spatial organisation, they view the Sassi through a picturesque lens.

One example, postmarked 1916, bears the caption Matera. Una veduta nel Sasso Caveoso on the recto (Figure 5). The colourised photograph was taken by V. Marsilio. Rising in the centre is the rock formation known as the Monterrone, home to the excavated sanctuaries of Santa Maria de Idris and San Giovanni in Monterrone, both probably begun in the twelfth century. At the lower left is the church of San Pietro Caveoso, perched at the edge of La Gravina. Built in the thirteenth century, this was remodelled in the seventeenth to include its Baroque-style façade. This area of the Sasso Caveoso, and the Monterrone in particular, has often been photographed and become an iconic feature of Matera. It appears on at least one other postcard published by Calculli before 1920 as well as on examples issued by the Stabilimento di Eliotipia Molfese of Torino as early as 1895, and Giovanni Vezzoso of Matera around 1900.

Figure 5. Matera. Una Veduta nel Sasso Caveoso. Giacinto Calculli. Author’s collection.

Although not the case on this card, the subject is often identified as Santa Maria de Idris. The only indications that the mass of rock houses a church is the stairway leading to the small, constructed façade and campanile, and the crosses perched on the summit of the Monterrone. The latter is surrounded by a jumble of structures that constitute the vicinato at its foot. While the inclusion of modest dwellings suggests a documentary intent, this is an artfully composed image created with attention to compositional symmetry; expressive juxtaposition of foreground and background; contrast of light and shade; and intriguing detail. As with all Calculli’s views of the Sassi, there is no indication of cave dwellings and there is nothing dark and foetid. Instead, the colour brightens a scene filled with warm light. An expansive sky and background, with a glimpse into La Gravina and a high horizon dotted with trees, alleviates any sense of the unhygienic density that struck Zanardelli and others. Instead, the viewer is offered an artfully composed, pleasing vista in which a focus on socio-spatial degradation is replaced by the attractively intriguing and seemingly exotic.

The fascinating nature of the image is enhanced by the fact that, while real poverty is conspicuously absent, so, it initially appears, is history. In contrast to postcards depicting the Piano, those picturing the Sassi present a time-worn, sometimes rock-hewn architecture bearing few explicit indications of contemporaneity. They depict what appears – to the casual observer – a society untouched by time. The latter is spatialised in these images; the Sassi seem situated in another age distinct from, if physically contiguous with, the rest of Matera. San Pietro Caveoso serves as a contrast to Santa Maria de Idris and highlights the seemingly age-old nature of the latter. In this picturesque image, the excavated church stands as positively representative of Matera’s ancient roots, singular history, and culturally unique architecture.

Yet San Pietro Caveoso, and other structures surrounding the Monterrone, indicate that a variety of buildings were constructed in the Sassi; in fact, the appearance of the valleys is the result of numerous architectural interventions occurring over centuries. Not simply, nor even mostly sites of cave dwelling, the Sassi were architecturally and socially complex quarters shaped by a long history of socio-spatial transformation. The presence of San Pietro Caveoso indicates that, for much of their history, the valleys were a fully integrated part of Matera’s urban fabric and home to all classes of resident. The physical, social, economic, and cultural separation of the city into two zones, and the transformation of the Sassi into a peasant ghetto of primitive appearance, largely began following Matera’s elevation to regional capital in 1663.

Ultimately, with their expansive views onto the built environment of the valleys, Calculli’s postcards do not frame them as necessarily ancient, and certainly not timeless. Their intent, considered as part of his overall portrait of Matera, does not appear to be the promotion of nostalgia for a society untouched by time, nor the value of rural existence as opposed to urbanism. Instead, they present a complex urban, architectural, and social space transformed, like that of numerous Italian cities, over many centuries.

Calculli seems to have been unique in also publishing postcards picturing the peasant inhabitants of the Sassi before 1920. Often captioned Matera – Costumi, the images range from expansive views of the architectural environment with people employed to animate the scene, to photographs which take peasants as their focus. In some, they appear informally if not candidly posed. Yet these photographs are mostly highly contrived, even artful in their composition and content. It is important to note that they were published at a time of social strife in and around the city. A peasant league was formed at Matera and, in June 1902, strikes involving up to 1,000 labourers resulted in arrests and the death of one peasant.⁸⁸ Given the number of people mobilised, their duration, and the nature of the demands, these events are understood as part of ‘il primo moderno conflitto di classe nelle campagne’.⁸⁹ Another peasant league was organised in 1912 and led to the winning of electoral majorities at the communal and provincial level. Calculli’s postcards provide no indication of these events. Instead, employing visual clichés, they are in keeping with the palatable representation of Italy’s social margins in middle-class culture.

One card offers a close-up view of a peasant couple seated on a mule (Figure 6). The animal is diagonally posed to provide the shallow foreground, framed by a rocky outcrop, with a sense of depth, and the ensemble of figures is set against a background offering a panoramic view of the Sasso Caveoso from the south-east. This is a sophisticated photograph that artfully combines a focus on its human subjects with an impressive vista onto their environment. It is also cleverly contrived in terms of content. The rocky outcrop framing the foreground emphasises the harsh natural environment in which these people eke out their living. To the left, a set of rough-hewn stone stairs and a chimney indicate human adaptation to the landscape, as does the panoramic view onto the Sasso Caveoso. The close connection of these peasants to their environment is also accentuated by the fact that the photograph was printed in monochrome and the figures are composed of the same hues as their surroundings. The limited tonal range lends the scene a dense materiality, the airlessness of which is relieved somewhat by the background vista.

Figure 6. Matera – Costumi. Giacinto Calculli. Author’s collection.

However, there is no indication that these people are the victims of abject poverty, housed in foetid dwellings. Instead, the image depicts a situation in which peasants, although poor, are not indigent, but decent, productive, and well-adapted to their environment. Both man and woman are humbly but well dressed; they are not ragged, and both wear shoes. They sit composed upon their mule in a way that is not undignified and maintain a self-possessed demeanour. As a feature that typologically defined peasant society, the mule occupies a conspicuous position and makes an important contribution to the image’s content. It signifies that this couple is not destitute. More particularly, the photograph pictures the relationship of this valuable piece of property to its owners as one of important work companion. There is nothing of the ‘horrible promiscuity’ of people and animals described by the Neapolitan journalist quoted above. In this respect, the postcard is notably different from photographs taken to document living conditions in the Sassi following the Second World War. In many photographs picturing the interior of cave dwellings at this time, mules are often conspicuously present to emphasise, not the relative well-being of their peasant inhabitants, but their deplorable living conditions.

It has been argued that postcard consumers are ‘attracted to traditional methods of composing pictures’.⁹⁰ This particular photograph, and others published by Calculli, clearly adopt some of the compositional strategies and rhetorical devices of fine art. It recalls the work of the Italian Pictorialists, photographers who produced highly crafted ‘sentimental meditations on pastoral landscapes’ that were often featured in La Fotografia Artistica, the magazine published between 1904 and 1917.⁹¹ Calculli’s images are not as artistically ambitious as those of the Pictorialists. Yet they are the product of developed interpretative and expressive skill and the peasants they depict are ‘transformed into subjects of aesthetic delectation’ while the harsh realities of their lives are ignored.⁹²

The fact that postcards depicting peasant costumes and material culture were collected by Giuseppe A. Andriulli, while he was gathering material in Basilicata for the Exhibition of Italian Ethnography in Rome in 1911, suggests Calculli’s cards also appealed to ethnographic and folklorist interest. While artful, their photographs are also ‘socially investigative’ and record information about the dress, material culture, and living environment of Sassi dwellers.⁹³ Although misery is absent, they depict something of the reality of life for many. The valleys were socially variegated spaces that were not home only to indigent peasants dwelling in caves. While many inhabitants lived precariously as tenant farmers and day labourers, others were artisans and small landholders. Many families lived in lamioni, single-room, barrel-vaulted structures built of tufa blocks with a tile roof. Others occupied larger edifices originally built for residents of higher social standing that were vacated and divided to accommodate peasant families.

Postcard publishers and their publics ‘are influenced by hegemonic ways of seeing that have a strong political edge’ and Calculli’s depictions of peasants were undoubtedly conceived in terms of the expectations of their prospective audience.⁹⁴ In form and content, they are in keeping with postcards picturing peasant society in all regions and, no matter his intentions, their appeal must have resided in a variety of expectations, sentiments, and interests. Inevitably, the environment they depict is a place of otherness embodying physical, social, and cultural realities intriguingly different from those of Calculli’s clientele. The picturesque aesthetic and seemingly exotic subject matter may have appealed to a taste for a ‘poetic margin’ beyond the ‘humdrum reality’ of many who purchased them.⁹⁵ The attraction for some may have been nostalgia for ‘an untroubled (and unreal) rustic experience that the country’s modernisation […] threatened to destroy’.⁹⁶ Perhaps others were interested in their documentary, folkloric, and ethnographic value. Whatever their appeal, postcards of this type served to reinforce societal power relations as those who purchased them looked upon people ‘different from, more backward than, and culturally inferior’ to themselves.⁹⁷

The point to be made, however, is that Calculli’s views of the Sassi and their inhabitants do not intentionally stigmatise them, nor explicitly treat them as colourful curiosities. The valleys and their inhabitants are not construed as an archaic, impoverished, and uncultured community emblematic of a tragic South. Instead, they are presented as part of a composite portrait of Matera as a city complex in its social makeup and boasting the architectural monuments of a long, intriguing history of engagement with events that shaped the peninsula at large.

Conclusion

Italy’s Fascist government suppressed public discussion of the South’s problems and Basilicata received relatively little coverage in the press beyond its borders.⁹⁸ La Basilicata nel mondo, published at Naples from 1924, continued to disseminate a positive image of the region from a local perspective. Recounting its history and culture, and offering biographies of eminent personages of local origin, the journal provided ‘un’inversione [… dell’]immagine consolidata’ presented in popular media, and was distributed in Italy and to the emigrant community.⁹⁹ Yet, as its regional perspective contrasted Fascist nationalism, it was forced to cease publication in 1927. At the same time, Calculli’s portrait of Matera grew in size and complexity. Publishing new images and re-issuing others, he was joined by local entrepreneurs sharing his vision. One particularly important figure was Francesco Riccardi who operated a bookshop on Corso Umberto I and issued several postcards, many picturing the architecture and public spaces depicted by Calculli. These consolidated the portrait of a respectable city befitting Matera’s status as provincial capital from 1927.

This image was promoted in media with a national distribution. In 1927, the Touring Club Italiano described the city as one of Italy’s most picturesque.¹⁰⁰ Focussing on the Sassi, it presented them as sites of rustic simplicity, not abject poverty, with photographs offering intriguing, visually pleasing images. Other publications followed Calculli’s portrait of an urbane centre more closely. An important example is Matera città sotterranea published in 1928 as one of a series of magazines entitled Le cento città d’Italia illustrate.¹⁰¹ Only three of the forty-one photographs suggest there is anything subterranean about the city, and the text treats the Sassi in summary fashion. Instead, the magazine sustains the portrait of a developed urban space with historically significant architecture. Many of the photographs employed were first published as postcards by Calculli and others. This is also true of the guide to Puglia, Lucania, and Calabria issued by the Touring Club Italiano in 1937 which presented the same portrait, while describing Matera, once again, as ‘una delle città più pittoresche d’Italia’.¹⁰² So did a postcard published by Valda in 1932, advertising its lozenges, which bears an artist’s rendition of the Castello Tramontano derived from a card issued by Riccardi. In these ways, images first published as postcards were employed to sell Matera to consumers as a historically and culturally significant southern city.

Following 1945, many locally published postcards expanded this portrait with images of new construction that constituted the partial reconfiguration of Matera’s historic centre and its growth beyond this.¹⁰³ These contradicted Luisa Levi’s disparaging image of Fascist-era building recounted by her brother.¹⁰⁴ Yet postcards also contributed to a process whereby Matera’s image was subsumed under that of the Sassi. The many produced today are one facet of a large volume of print and digital media sustaining a fascination with the ‘città dei Sassi’.¹⁰⁵ Informed by what are perceived to be the vestiges of a prehistoric settlement, popular representations often distort the nature and history of the valleys and city. Many visitors are drawn to Matera by the ‘romantic and essentializing notion of timelessness’ that dominates its popular image.¹⁰⁶ The inclination to believe in a place untouched by time may be grounded in a ‘popular nostalgia’ expressing itself ‘in the rush to find traces of vanishing, pre-modern ways of life, untouched, unconscious and static in opposition to how we define ourselves’.¹⁰⁷

The popular photographic portrayal published by Giacinto Calculli before 1920 sustained a tradition of describing Matera as a historically important and well-appointed city built and characterised by its upper and middle classes. In the context of increasing condemnation of the Sassi, his postcards presented a proud, attractive self-portrait by focusing on the Cività and Piano; providing picturesque vistas onto the valleys that offered a visually pleasing encounter with their intriguing architecture and historical complexity; and artfully and selectively depicting their peasant inhabitants. Purchased by local consumers as decorations and gifts, posted to correspondents throughout Italy, and republished in media with a national distribution, they constituted a locally produced complement to a less prejudiced, sometimes positive portrayal of Basilicata that was modifying narratives often narrowly focused on foregrounding the region’s deficiencies.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Enzo Viti for sharing his knowledge of this subject and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Carlo Levi, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Turin: Einaudi, 1945).

² Anne Parmly Toxey, Materan Contradictions: Architecture, Preservation and Politics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 88.

³ Riccardo Musati and others, Matera 55. Radiografia di una città del Sud tra antcio e moderno (Matera: Giannatelli, 1996).

⁴ Lindsay Harris, ‘Pictures in the Mind: Photography and Matera’, in Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town, ed. by Lindsay Harris (New York: American Academy in Rome, 2017), pp. 78–104 (p. 81).

⁵ Lindsay Harris, ‘The Human Face of Big Business: American Documentary Photography in Matera (1948–1954)’, Rivista di studi di fotografia, 9 (2019), 30–53 (p. 40).

⁶ Harris, ‘Pictures in the Mind’, p. 80.

⁷ Marta Ragozzino, ‘Matera between Dystopia and Utopia: The Construction of an Image’, in Matera Imagined, pp. 68–77 (p. 72).

⁸ Ferdinando Mirizzi, ‘Introduzione’, in Da vicino e da lontano: Fotografi e fotografia in Lucania, ed. by Ferdinando Mirizzi (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2010), pp. 13–20 (p. 16).

⁹ L’Italia in posa: cento anni di cartoline illustrate, ed. by Paola Callegari and Enrico Sturani (Naples: Electa, 1997).

¹⁰ David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson, ‘Introduction’, in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, ed. by David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. xi–xix (p. xi).

¹¹ Bjarne Rogan, ‘An Entangled Object: The Picture Postcard as Souvenir and Collectible, Exchange and Ritual Communication’, Cultural Analysis, 4 (2005), 1–27 (p. 26).

¹² Enrico Sturani, ‘La cartolina illustrata: editori, autori, utenti’, in L’Italia in posa, pp. 15–24 (p. 15).

¹³ See Teresa Colletta, Napoli su cartolina: La città e il suo paesaggio urbano tra il 1895 e il 1940 illustrata su 250 cartoline ‘viaggiate’ (Naples: Grimaldi, 2011).

¹⁴ See Giuseppe Venezia, Saluti da Melfi. La storia della città raccontata dalle cartoline. Dalla fine dell’Ottocento agli anni Trenta (Lavello: Alfagrafica Volonnino, 2022).

¹⁵ David Forgacs, Italy’s Margins: Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 65.

¹⁶ Levi quoted in Ragozzino, ‘Matera between Dystopia and Utopia’, p. 69.

¹⁷ Sturani, p. 20.

¹⁸ Nancy Stieber, ‘Postcards and the Invention of Old Amsterdam Around 1900’, in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories, pp. 24–41.

¹⁹ Naomi Schor, ‘Cartes Postales: Representing Paris 1900’ in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories, pp. 1–23, (p. 15).

²⁰ Sturani, p. 15.

²¹ Prochaska and Mendelson, ‘Introduction’, p. xii.

²² Stieber, p. 32.

²³ Matera: Storia di Una Città, ed. by Lorenzo Rota, Mario Tommaselli, and Franco Conese (Matera: BMG, 1981), p. 66.

²⁴ Guida Generale di Puglia e Lucania (Bari: S.A. Guide di Puglia e Lucania, 1933).

²⁵ Nino Calice, ‘La nascita dei partiti e “l’acre piacere delle lotte economiche”’, in Storia della Basilicata, 4, L’Età contemporanea, ed. by Antonio Cestaro, 4 vols (Rome: Laterza, 2021), pp. 147–71 (p. 154).

²⁶ Eustachio Vinciguerra, ‘Da Largo Plebiscito a Piazza Vittorio Veneto.’ Storie, aneddoti, immagini. Un percorso di 100 anni (Matera: Circolo Culturale ‘L’Atrio’, n.d.), p. 21.

²⁷ Stieber, p. 25.

²⁸ Annelies Moors, ‘Presenting People: The Politics of Picture Postcards of Palestine/Israel’, in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories, pp. 93–105 (p. 94).

²⁹ Sturani, p. 18.

³⁰ Schor, pp. 14, 21.

³¹ Giovanni Caserta, ‘La cultura tra Ottocento e Novecento’, in Storia della Basilicata, 4, L’Età contemporanea, iv, pp. 605–55 (pp. 620–21).

³² Giuseppe Gattini, Note Storiche sulla Città di Matera e sulle sue Famiglie Nobili (Naples: A. Perrotti, 1882); Giacomo Racioppi, Storia dei popoli della Lucania e della Basilicata (Rome: Loescher, 1889).

³³ Sergio Di Pilato, Saggio Bibliografico sulla Basilicata (Potenza: Vincenzo Garramone, 1914).

³⁴ Schor, p. 17.

³⁵ Forgacs, p. 291.

³⁶ Forgacs, p. 1.

³⁷ Jane Schneider, ‘Introduction: The Dynamics of Neo-orientalism in Italy (1848–1995)’, in Italy’s ‘Southern Question’. Orientalism in One Country, ed. by Jane Schneider (Oxford: Berg, 1998), pp. 1–23 (p. 1).

³⁸ Victoria Calabrese, ltalian Women in Basilicata: Staying Behind but Moving Forward during the Age of Mass Emigration, 1876–1914 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022), p. xxvi.

³⁹ Raffaele de Cesare, ‘Sommario di storia politica e amministrativa d’Italia (1861–1901)’, in Cinquanta anni di storia italiana, ed. by Reale Accademia dei Lincei, 3 vols (Milan: Hoepli, 1911), i, pp. 1–55 (p. 49).

⁴⁰ Quoted in Francesco Nitti, ‘Matera: le vicende storiche’ in Radiografia di una città, pp. 95–248 (p. 181).

⁴¹ ‘The Italian Premier’s Tour’, The Sphere, 25 October 1902, p. 81.

⁴² Calabrese, Land of Women, p. xxiv.

⁴³ Harris, ‘Pictures in the Mind’, p. 79.

⁴⁴ Toxey, Materan Contradictions, p. 51.

⁴⁵ Luigi Tomassini, ‘La Lucania nell’editoria fotografica della prima metà del XX secolo’, in Da vicino, pp. 160–84 (p. 183).

⁴⁶ Tomassini, p. 183.

⁴⁷ Marco Sagrestani, ‘Viaggio, inchiesta, legge: Zanardelli in Basilicata’, in Le inchieste agrarie in età liberale, ed. by Giustina Manica (Florence: Polistampa, 2017), pp. 103–16 (p. 107).

⁴⁸ Zanardelli quoted in Victoria Calabrese, ‘Land of Women. Basilicata, Emigration, and the Women Who Remained Behind, 1880–1914’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, City University of New York, 2017), p. 63.

⁴⁹ Domenica Malvasi and Antonio Romano, Giuseppe Zanardelli in Basilicata. Discorsi e cronache attraverso i giornali (Matera: Magister, 2020).

⁵⁰ Some are collected in the Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia in Florence and the Archivio storico della Biblioteca Comunale ‘F. Rondinelli’ di Montalbano Jonico.

⁵¹ ‘Paesi e Costumi della Basilicata’, La Tribuna illustrata, 21 September 1902, p. 464.

⁵² Antonio Cestaro, ‘Le grandi inchieste parlamentari’, in Storia della Basilicata, pp. 201–25, (p. 216).

⁵³ Camillo Crema, ‘Il petrolio nel territorio di Tramutola (Potenza)’, Bolletino della Società Geologica Italiana, 21 (1902), pp. xxxvi–xxxviii.

⁵⁴ Gianni Maragno, I commerci le arti le industrie. La presenza della provincia di Basilicata alla Esposizione Internazionale di Milano del 1906 (Pisticci: Setac, 2018).

⁵⁵ Enzo V. Alliegro, Terraferma. Un’ ‘Altra Basilicata’ tra stereotipi, identità e [sotto]sviluppo (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbetino, 2019), p. 207.

⁵⁶ Ibid.; Francesco Perrone, Il problema del mezzogiorno (Naples: L. Pierro, 1913).

⁵⁷ Alliegro, Terraferma, p. 259.

⁵⁸ Mario Buffa, Un grande impianto idroelettrico in Basilicata. Progetto d’utilizzazione del fiume Agri (Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1912).

⁵⁹ Cesare Cagli, ‘La Basilicata’, Nuova Antologia, 146 (1910), 427–48; Cesare Cagli, ‘L’Emigrazione e l’agricolutra in Basilicata’, Nuova Antologia, 148 (1910), 135–57; Cesare Cagli, ‘L’Avvenire della Basilicata’, Nuova Antologia, 148 (1910), 489–96.

⁶⁰ Giuseppe De Lorenzo, Venosa e la Regione di Vulture (La Terra D’Orazio) (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano D’Arti Grafiche, 1906), p. 9.

⁶¹ ‘Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini nelle province meridionali e nella Sicilia’, Basilicata e Calabria, Relazione del delegato tecnico Eugenio Azimonti (Rome: Bertero, 1909).

⁶² Mirizzi, ‘Introduzione’, p. 20.

⁶³ ‘Inchiesta parlamentare sulle condizioni dei contadini nelle province meridionali e nella Sicilia’, Basilicata e Calabria, Relazione della Sotto Giunta Parlamentare (Rome: Bertero, 1910).

⁶⁴ Enzo V. Alliegro, ‘Alle origini dell’etnofotograria in Basilicata. L’inchiesta parlaementare “Faina” e la Mostra di etnografia italiana tra sapere demologico e approcci di economia agraria e politica (1906–1911)’, in Da vicino, pp. 185–208 (pp. 197–98).

⁶⁵ Ibid., p. 198.

⁶⁶ Anne Parmly Toxey, ‘Provincial Capital vs. Peasant Capital. A Subaltern Perspective on Urban Rise and Fall from Grace’, in Political Landscapes of Capital Cities, ed. by Jessica Joyce Christie, Jelena Bogdanović, and Eulogio Guzmá (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2016), pp. 287–318 (p. 294).

⁶⁷ Giovanni Battista Pacichelli, Il regno di Napoli in prospettiva (Naples: Michele Luigi Mutio, 1703), p. 267.

⁶⁸ Giuseppe Antonini, La Lucania (Naples: Francesco Tomberli, 1745), pp. 553–54.

⁶⁹ See Giuseppe D’Errico, Dell’importanza della provincia di Basilicata e della futura sua missione tra le provincie italiane (Turin: Franco-Italiana, 1865), pp. 104–05.

⁷⁰ Gattini, Note Storiche, pp. 176–80.

⁷¹ Pacichelli, p. 267.

⁷² Thomas Salmon, Lo stato presente di tutti i paesi, e popolo del mondo naturale, politico, e morale, con nuove osservazioni, e correzioni degli antichi e moderni viaggiatori, 27 vols (Venice: Giambatista Albrizi, 1731–1766), xxiii (1761), p. 290.

⁷³ Giuseppe Gattini, La Cattedrale illustrata (Matera: Tipografia Commerciale, 1913).

⁷⁴ Émile Bertaux, L’Art dans L’Italie meridionale, 2 vols (Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1904), II, pp. 635–36; 691–97.

⁷⁵ ‘Una chiesetta dentro la montagna’, La Domenica del Corriere, 16–23 February 1913, p. 11; ‘Una chiesa del 300 scavata in uno scoglio a Matera’, La Tribuna illustrata, 2–9 February 1913, n.p.

⁷⁶ ‘Le ferrovie Calabro-Lucane’, Rivista Mensile del Touring Club Italiano, January 1915, pp. 51–55 (p. 52).

⁷⁷ Quoted in Nitti, pp. 180–81.

⁷⁸ Harris, ‘Pictures in the Mind’, p. 79.

⁷⁹ Zanardelli quoted in Lorenzo Rota, Matera: Storia di una Città (Matera: Edizioni Giannatelli, 2011), p. 208.

⁸⁰ Nitti quoted in Ibid., p. 214.

⁸¹ Gaetano Amalfi, ‘La Festa della Bruna in Matera (Potenza)’, Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, 17 (1898), 372–78 (p. 373).

⁸² Toxey, ‘Provincial Capital’, p. 298.

⁸³ Eustachio Verricelli, Cronica de la Città di Matera nel Regno di Napoli (1595 e 1596), ed. by Maria Moliterni, Camilla Motta, and Mauro Padula (Matera: BMG, 1987), pp. 29, 111.

⁸⁴ Rosalba Demetrio, Matera. Forma et Imago Urbis (Matera: Giuseppe Barile, 2009), p. 93, n. 2.

⁸⁵ Nelson J. Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 205.

⁸⁶ Ibid., p. 206.

⁸⁷ Gabriella Gribaudi, ‘Images of the South’, in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. by David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 72–87 (p. 73).

⁸⁸ Nitti, p. 185.

⁸⁹ Calice, p. 155.

⁹⁰ Timothy van Laar, ‘Views of the Ordinary and Other Scenic Disappointments’, in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories, pp. 194–202 (p. 196).

⁹¹ Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Photography and Italy (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), p. 79.

⁹² Linda Nochlin, The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 50.

⁹³ Forgacs, p. 52.

⁹⁴ Moors, p. 94.

⁹⁵ John Dickie, Darkest Italy. The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), p. 92.

⁹⁶ Lindsay Harris, ‘Photography of the “Primitive” in Italy: Perceptions of the Peasantry at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 17 (2012), 310–30 (p. 317).

⁹⁷ Nochlin, p. 51.

⁹⁸ Pantaleone Sergi, ‘Riflettori mediatici sulla Basilicata fascista’, Bolletino Storico della Basilicata, 25 (2009), 181–91.

⁹⁹ Maria Teresa Imbriani, ‘“La Basilicata Nel Mondo”: Una rivista di promozione culturale’, Basilicata Regione Notizie, 11 (1998), 57–60 (p. 57).

¹⁰⁰ Carmelo Colamonico, ‘Una città semisotterranea’, Le Vie d’Italia, 33 (1927), 383–95.

¹⁰¹ Adolfo Brettagna, Matera città sotterranea, Le cento città d’Italia illustrate, 242 (Milan: Sonzogno, 1928).

¹⁰² Touring Club Italiano, Puglia, Lucania, Calabria (Milan: Touring Club Italiano, 1937), p. 148.

¹⁰³ Ulrich Brinkmann, Matera moderna. Postkarten aus der Zeit des italienischen Wirtschaftswunders (Berlin: DOM, 2022).

¹⁰⁴ Levi, pp. 73–74.

¹⁰⁵ La Storia di Matera. Dalla preistoria ai giorni nostri, ed. by Silvia Trupo (Rome: Typimedia, 2019), p. 31.

¹⁰⁶ Emma Blake ‘Materan Myth and Materan History’, in Matera Imagined, pp. 30–45 (p. 31).

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., p. 41.