Photographing Mussolini: The Making of a Political Icon [1 ed.] 9783030565053, 9783030565060

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ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

Photographing Mussolini The Making of a Political Icon Alessandra Antola Swan

Italian and Italian American Studies

Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, USA

This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. Editorial Board Rebecca West, University of Chicago Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” William J. Connell, Seton Hall University

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835

Alessandra Antola Swan

Photographing Mussolini The Making of a Political Icon

Alessandra Antola Swan Independent Author London, UK

ISSN 2635-2931 ISSN 2635-294X (electronic) Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-3-030-56505-3 ISBN 978-3-030-56506-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: ullstein bild Dtl./Contributor/GettyImages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Stephen Gundle for his constant guidance and support, encouraging me to develop the necessary intellectual independence for my research while always ensuring the relevance and pertinence of the argument. I would also like to acknowledge Luciano Cheles, the late Christopher Duggan, David Forgacs, Paul Ginsborg, Simona Storchi and Giuliana Pieri for their insight, understanding and constructive comments. I am grateful to those who have personally helped during my research: Isabella Canino, Ferdinando Carrese, Martina Caruso, Cesare Colombo, Marco Della Torre, Tita Di Domenicantonio, Roberto Dulio, Giovanna Ginex, Francesco Giunta, Cristina and Nino Mascardi, Adolfo Mignemi, Cynthia Rich, Sandro Rizzi, René and Giny Van Roij, Giuliana Scimé, Sergio Spinelli, Enrico Sturani, Mario Tursi, Colette Wilson. Many individuals from institutions, archives, collections, private and public have provided me with help and advice, in particular I would like to thank the following for their time and expertise: Dimitri Affri (Archivist); Saverio Amadori (Archivist); Andrea Amatiste (Istituto Luce); Aldo Coletto (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense); Paolo Cortesi (Emeroteca Biblioteca Comunale Aurelio Saffi Forlì); Fiorenza Danti, Franco D’Emilio, Cinzia Romagnoli (Archivio di Stato Forlì); Danilo Fullin (Centro Documentazione Rcs Quotidiani Corriere della

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sera); Alessandra Gini (Fondazione di Venezia); Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Archivio Fotografico Villa I Tatti); Roberto Gollo (Sala Microfilm Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense); Daniela Mericio (Olycom); Silvia Paoli, Alessandro Oldani, Luca Postini, Mauro Maffeis and Nadia Piccirillo (Civico Archivio Fotografico Castello Sforzesco); Elena e Patrizia Piccini (Fototeca Storica Nazionale Ando Gilardi); Nino Romeo (Libreria Hoepli); Francesca Tramma (Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera); Antonella Imolesi Pozzi (Biblioteca Comunale Aurelio Saffi Fondo Piancastelli Forlì); Michele Losacco (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense).

Contents

1

Introduction

Part I

1

Setting the Scene

2

The Photograph as a Source and Agent of History

21

3

Images in Politics Before Mussolini

45

Part II

Production

4

The Image Makers of the Duce

63

5

The Corporate Image: Istituto Luce

77

6

The Press-Image: Photojournalists and Agencies

109

7

The Aesthetic Image: Ghitta Carell

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CONTENTS

Part III

Audiencing

8

The Visual Presence of the Duce

165

9

Mussolini’s Early Photographs

215

10

Mussolini’s Photogenic Charisma

251

11

The Emotional Appeal

281

12

Marketing Mussolini

317

Part IV 13

Modalities

Conclusion

345

Bibliography

353

Index

385

About the Author

Alessandra Antola Swan is a cultural historian and her Ph.D. on Mussolini and photography was part of the project The Cult of the Duce. Mussolini and the Italians, 1918–2005. In 2013 she organised the ASMI conference Iconic Images and in 2016 she was guest editor for the follow up special issue of Modern Italy 2016.

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Benito Mussolini full page illustration, Tempo, 26 October 1939, Mussolini at the Congress of Naples, on 24 October 1922 Book cover for the biography by Giorgio Pini 1939. Original image: Mussolini salutes the crowd in Turin, 14 May 1939 Photograph deliberately reproduced without caption (Ansa) Close-up of Alessandra Mussolini signing the photographs of her grandfather for the Lega Nord MP Carolina Lussana, 12 June 2012—(Ansa) The Duce during a rally in Bolzano, 1935, as seen in the weekly Radiocorriere 1–7 September 1935 A postcard of Mussolini cut out and decontextualised from a Luce photograph taken in piazza Venezia, Rome on 28 April 1935 during Celebrazione per la Festa del lavoro A postcard published after three attempts on Mussolini’s life in 1926: ‘La Santa dell’Impossibile veglia sul nostro Duce’ (The Saint of the Impossible watches over our Duce) (Archivio Sturani, Rome) Postcard of Umberto di Savoia, Crown Prince of Italy Giuseppe Garibaldi, carte-de-visite, late 1860s

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6 11

12 24

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38 49 51

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7 Fig. 5.8

Fig. 6.1

Postcard of Gabriele D’Annunzio at Quarto (Genoa) on the inauguration of Garibaldi Monument on 5 May 1915 with a propaganda postcard of a younger Mussolini from 1912 and the March on Rome 1922 and sent on 28.10.1928 Left, 1918 flight over Vienna: Gabriele D’Annunzio and pilot Natale Palli (Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani - Archivio Iconografico); Right, Mussolini as pilot in a press photograph from 1937 Left, Gabriele D’Annunzio photographed by Mario de Maria, Venice circa 1918–1919 (Fondazione di Venezia); Right, Mussolini by Carell in 1933, resembles the portrait on the left, although it does not necessarily derive from it; both images probably rely on the typology of the thinker or the intellectual (Fototeca Gilardi) La Domenica del Corriere 4 May 1930–Mussolini with family; in the medallion his daughter Edda and her husband Galeazzo Ciano Mussolini at Palazzo Venezia in a group photograph, 1940 This image was taken in Claridges of Mussolini with two Blackshirts during a visit to London in December 1922 Left, shows the image above reproduced in The Sphere on 16 December 1922. It is interesting to note the two inset images of Mussolini in a bathing costume and fencing The bookshop Flammarion in Paris in the 1920s. Note the repeated images of Mussolini A Beltrame drawing from a photograph, 3 September 1933 Mussolini at Terminillo by Appetiti in January 1937 Mussolini at Terminillo in 1937 Russian President Vladimir Putin fishing on the Khemchik River in the Republic of Tuva in 2007 (Sputnik/Alamy Stock Photo) A double-page spread, in the German magazine Münchner Illustrierte also published in the British Weekly Illustrated, of Mussolini photographed by Felix Man in 1931

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90 92 94 100 105

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5 Fig. 6.6

Fig. 6.7

Fig. 6.8 Fig. 6.9

Fig. 6.10

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Another image from the series with Mussolini behind his desk in the Sala Mappamondo. ‘Mussolini Giving Orders to Teruzzi, Commandant of the Fascist Militia, 1931’ This page from La Domenica del Corriere shows images of Mussolini taken during the Battle for Grain in 1935 on the same page as advertisements for medicines and toothpaste as well as educational courses. La Domenica del Corriere, 7 July 1935 (n. xxxvii at top left of page can be misleading as both newspaper library and a newsreel from Luce catalogued this page as 7 July 1935) Newsweek cover from 1939 of Mussolini at the end of the Stresa Conference (Lake Maggiore 11–14 April 1935) Mussolini in 1922 after his appointment as prime minister, by Porry Pastorel (Fototeca Gilardi) Mussolini with Air Marshal Italo Balbo upon his return from leading the Italian air armada in an historic flight from Italy to Chicago in 1933 A print of the monumental installation of a two-tone portrait based on a photograph of Mussolini, erected in front of the facade of the cathedral in Milan, 1933. The image was also reproduced in the press, for instance in Rivista Illustrata del “Popolo d’Italia”, 13 November 1933 (SZ/Photo/Scherl/Bridgeman Images) Also by Carrese this photograph was taken during the Turin visit 14 May 1939 ‘Mussolini speaking in Turin’, here published in L’Illustrazione Italiana 21 May 1939, was taken by Carrese during a speech in Turin, 14 May 1939 This postcard illustrates una disposizione of 27 October 1943 to reproduce Mussolini “possibly wearing a helmet” This is a mounted photograph from 1939 of Mussolini, one of three portraits taken by Ghitta Carell in 1933 (Roberto Dulio collection) Mussolini by Carell in 1933 resembles the portrait of D’Annunzio although it does not necessarily derive from it; both images probably rely on the typology of the thinker or the intellectual (Fototeca Gilardi)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2

Fig. 8.3

Fig. 8.4 Fig. 8.5

Fig. 8.6

Fig. 8.7

Fig. 8.8

Gabriele d’Annunzio photographed by Mario de Maria, Venice circa 1918–1919 (Fondazione di Venezia) A later image by Carell of Mussolini from April 1937. This image was reproduced on differing photographic bases and in various publications. Note the retouching around the waist (Roberto Dulio collection) Inside cover of Le Giornate Fiumane di Mussolini by Edoardo Susmel (1937) Images of Mussolini from 1922 after the March on Rome were reproduced throughout the regime. On the left is a postcard, centre a booklet published by Nerbini, right a photomontage published by Zaccaria from 1922. The image was also used in the biography by Vittorio De Fiori in 1928 This image appeared in Il Grande Educatore dell’Italia Nuova by Oddone Tesini in 1931 and Mussolini e lo Sport in 1928 This image is from the book Mussolini Aviatore by Guido Mattioli 1936 This image was used in the book Mussolini Aviatore by Guido Mattioli 1936. It was also published in the Corriere della Sera on the third page in 1939 Image of Mussolini’s birthplace in Predappio and nearby summer residence, Rocca delle Caminate, featured in various publications including this edition of the L’Illustrazione Italiana, 11 July 1938. In La Riviera Romagnola one of the numerous articles on Mussolini’s birthplace from 13 February 1933 Left, the book cover of Mussolini by Arturo Rossato in 1922. To the right, the same image on a postcard from the 1920s. Bottom, an image from the early 1920s of Mussolini on the inside cover of his book Scritti e Discorsi, vol. IV 1924, published in hardback dated 25 July 1934. Later only a couple of biographies in 1938 and 1939, by Villaroel and Pini, used this type of image This manipulated image shows Mussolini talking alone with three nuns reproduced in ‘Duce e Popolo’ from June 1942, published by Il Rubicone and edited by Giuseppe Massani

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.9

Fig. 8.10

Fig. 8.11

Fig. 8.12 Fig. 8.13

Fig. 8.14

Fig. 8.15

Fig. 8.16

Fig. 8.17

Fig. 8.18

Fig. 8.19

Image of Mussolini in a helmet on the book cover, OPERA BALILLA, September 1934. On the right a similar image on a calendar, P.N.F. anno XV 1936–1937 Two book covers, Un uomo e un popolo by Carlo Delcroix in 1928 and IL DUCE alle Gerarchie di Roma from 23 February 1941 Top left, is a postcard from a Luce image from the Battle for Grain taken in July 1934 in Borgo Pasubio (Rome); on an exercise book and bottom left as a front page propaganda booklet in 1937 Below another series documenting the Battle for Grain, published in La Domenica del Corriere in 1937 These images document some of the differing bases used for reproducing Mussolin’s image. Top is the cover of a periodical GIOVENTÙ FASCISTA, published 31 May 1936; bottom left, a much reproduced Luce image published here as a calendar for the P.N.F. 1938–1939; right, a large print, 34 × 48 cm., possibly a wall portrait Front page of the Corriere della Sera on the declaration of war, 10 June 1940 with an image taken during the event Railway station kiosk in Modena taken in 1927. Various images of both Mussolini and the king can be seen (on the occasion of Festa Nazionale del libro Italiano/The National Italian book festival) Railway station kiosk in Alessandria taken in 1927. Various images of both Mussolini and the king can be seen (on the occasion of Festa Nazionale del libro Italiano/The National Italian book festival) Front page of the Corriere della Sera, 3 October 1935, on the declaration of war with Ethiopia. This front page evokes the presence of Mussolini as, although he is not visible in the image, the headlines state that the crowd responds to the Duce’s appeal with ‘an overwhelming declaration of faith’ Left, Corriere della Sera 28 March 1939, Mussolini as aviator. The postcard has no date but seems to have been taken some years earlier Left, this image reproduced as a postcard was taken by Attilio Badodi and also, right, published in L’Illustrazione Italiana at the end of 1925

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.20

Fig. 8.21

Fig. 8.22

Fig. 8.23

Fig. 8.24 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2

Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4

Fig. 9.5

Fig. 9.6

Fig. 9.7 Fig. 9.8

L’Illustrazione Italiana 4 February 1923. The caption reads ‘The Prime Minister’s morning ride’ (photo R. Ugolini) (Chronicle/Alamy Stock photo) Below, La Domenica del Corriere, 1934. A series of images of the Duce among the people. The cut-out image of Mussolini with a young child, ‘Bacio ad un Balilla’ (kissing a Balilla), was a common theme and often reproduced The front cover of L’Illustrazione Italiana, 26 August 1934. This image of the king and Mussolini taken when on manoeuvres in 1933 was often reproduced on differing bases including as a postcard from 1936 On 26 October 1939, Tempo, an illustrated periodical, published an article celebrating 17 years of Fascism. Above is the reproduction of a complete page which documents the centrality of Mussolini’s image in the composition Benito Mussolini full-page colour illustration, Tempo, 26 October 1939 Postcard from 1922 of Mussolini at 14 Mussolini studio photograph taken in Lausanne with a handwritten dedication to his mother in 1904, Louis Schmid photographer, published in various biographies Mussolini as a conscript in 1905 (akg-images/Alamy Stock photo) Mussolini alongside General La Marmora for the centenary celebration of the Regiment of Bersaglieri, 21 June 1936 La Domenica del Corriere Top clockwise, Mussolini at 14, in Switzerland, King Vittorio Emanuele III at twenty-one 1890, Umberto di Savoia, Crown Prince of Italy, postcards Mussolini when editor of La Lotta di Classe, 13 January 1912, La Lotta di Classe, Forlì (Raccolte Piancastelli della Biblioteca di Forlì) Published image Mussolini’s arrest 11 April 1915 (the third image in the series) (Fototeca Gilardi) Unpublished image of Mussolini’s arrest 11 April 1915, the following three images are reproduced in the order they were taken (Fototeca Gilardi)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.9

Fig. 9.10

Fig. 9.11

Fig. 9.12

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2

Fig. 10.3 Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5

Fig. 10.6 Fig. 10.7 Fig. 11.1

Fig. 11.2

Unpublished image of Mussolini’s arrest 11 April 1915 (the second image in the series) (Civico Archivio Fotografico) Front page of Il Giornale d’Italia reporting the arrest of Mussolini with the image by the photographer Porry Pastorel, 12 April 1915 (Biblioteca G.C. Croce San Giovanni in Persiceto) Front page of Il Popolo d’Italia, the paper founded by Mussolini, with an image of him as a serving soldier, reporting the ongoing story of his wounding, 27 February 1917 Mussolin’s convalescing in the military hospital of the Red Cross in Via Arena - Milan, talking to Dr. Ambrogio Binda (left). The original image was taken in 1917 and reproduced in various formats and as a postcard in circulation from circa 1920s A postcard, originally taken by Caminada in 1919 and on the cover of il Secolo Illustrato 1921 A Luce photograph also reproduced as a postcard from 1933 of a vast stencil-style reproduction of Mussolini’s head on the facade of the cathedral in Milan. The original portrait is probably from the late 1920s Richard Strauss by Steichen, 1904 (H Horth/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images) A postcard of Mussolini, photograph De Poi, c. 1921 (Archivio Sturani, Rome) Left, a postcard and the same image published in the weekly newspaper Il Popolo di Romagna on the right on 14 April 1923 Ghitta Carell’s studio portrait of Mussolini in L’Illustrazione Italiana, 1937 Mussolini by Ghitta Carell in L’Illustrazione Italiana 9 October 1938 An image taken by Luigi Leoni and sent to the Corriere della Sera, see right, for publication on the following day, 20 March 1937 (Fondazione Corriere della Sera Archivio Storico) Left the Luce print, here as a postcard, cropped and on the right, the edited version published in Giorgio Pini’s biography of 1939

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262 271 272

275 277 278

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4

Fig. 11.5 Fig. 11.6 Fig. 11.7 Fig. 11.8 Fig. 11.9 Fig. 11.10

Fig. 11.11

Fig. 11.12

Fig. 11.13

Fig. 11.14

‘War!’ Mussolini posing on horseback with a sword on the cover of Tempo, 13 June 1940 This image shows Mussolini sowing on a visit to the Milizia Nazionale Forestale on 19 October 1934. Note the presence of various photographers at these kind of events This image, by Porry Pastorel, was suitable for publication This is a photomontage using another image from the event, published in La Vittoria in January 1935 ‘Il Duce fra i Centauri’ is a postcard from 1933 Another postcard from 1934, shows an image without detail (‘assolutizzata’ ) to distract from Mussolini Mussolini beginning the foundations for the new Militia headquarters in Rome, 5 November 1934 An image from the Battle for Grain in Aprilia (Rome) 4 July 1938, published on the front page of L’Illustrazione Italiana 10 July 1938, in Corriere della Sera and Giorgio Pini’s biography in 1939 From the same event in Aprilia (Rome) 4 July 1938, this image was not considered appropriate for publication (Luce Institute/Alinari Archives Management, Florence) A postcard from 1938, with the chest hair retouched, and to the right another image from the series published as a drawing by Beltrame in La Domenica del Corriere on 17 July 1938 This type of image showing the Duce among the people was much used in the later years of the regime. Postcard, Aprilia, Rome, 1938 Mussolini at Terminillo. This Luce image was part of a series, some clothed and some bare-chested, of him skiing from early 1937. Selected images from the same series were published in the press, as was this one in L’Illustrazione Italiana Sportiva on 28 January 1937

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 11.15

Fig. 11.16

Fig. 11.17

Fig. 11.18

Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3

Left, Mussolini skiing reinterpreted as an action drawing, on 7 February 1937, in La Tribuna Illustrata, with the caption ‘Il Duce, accomplished sportsman’ allowed himself an excellent physical diversion skiing bare-chested on the snowy slopes of Terminillo. He was accompanied by Romano, the youngest of his sons (Disegno di Vittorio Pisani). To the right, an image from the same series was considered appropriate for the foreign market appearing cropped and inverted in a French periodical on 27 January 1937 (Fototeca Gilardi) Mussolini, Ciano and in between the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss walking on the beach at Riccione, 19 August 1933 (Fototeca Gilardi). This, and the image of Mussolini standing on a boat, photographed on the same day, were published and circulated locally as postcards. The image of Mussolini swimming also appeared in the first number of the new supplement, L’Illustrazione Italiana Sportiva on 3 December 1936 A postcard of Mussolini kissing a child dressed as a Balilla, signed and dated Anno XIII (1935) from a photograph published in La Domenica del Corriere, 1934, no.40, part of a series of images of the Duce among the people. The cut-out image of Mussolini with a young child, ‘Bacio ad un Balilla’ (kissing a Balilla), was a common theme and often reproduced Published in La Domenica del Corriere on 6 March 1938. This drawing by Beltrame, who worked from photographs, shows the Duce greeting his son Bruno, and even though his face is obscured, Mussolini is instantly recognisable Triplex gas stoves advertisement in 1933 from a publicity brochure for Fiera di Milano Postcard featuring the Duce visiting the motorbike Gilera exhibition in 1934, Rome Bollettino Luce (Luce brochure) 1942 with price list. Note that even though printed during the war, images of Mussolini for sale are not all in uniform, with some from the 1920s, and together they represent a cross-section of his various photographic persona

xix

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315 328 331

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 12.4

A postcard showing the corpses of Mussolini, Clara Petacci and some high-ranking Fascists in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, on 29 April 1945. It is one of a series that was privately produced and sold just after the event

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Reflecting on the task of classifying photography, Roland Barthes notes that photographs have something tautological about them in that they cannot be separated from what they represent, as if both photograph and referent were ‘affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world: they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures’.1 Barthes’s dramatic use of words expresses the difficulty in separating the various layers of meaning produced by photographs while Stephen Shore explains that photographs can be read on different levels: To begin with, it is a physical object, a print. On this print is an image, an illusion of a window on to the world. It is on this level that we usually read a picture and discover its content […]. Embedded in this level is another that contains signals to our mind’s perceptual apparatus. It gives ‘spin’ to what the image depicts and how it is organised.2

Reading the photograph requires maintaining the illusory power of the image before the eyes and independent from the photograph as physical object thus, in Graham Clark’s words making the photograph ‘one of

1 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1982), p. 6. 2 Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs, 2nd edn (London: Phaidon, 2007), p. 10.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_1

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A. ANTOLA SWAN

the most complex and most problematic forms of representation’.3 When adopted as a means of propaganda, the specific and intrinsic characteristic of duality can lead photographs to be perceived as ‘truthful’ and therefore a direct channel to the real. This peculiarity, along with being infinitely and easily reproducible, made photography one of the preferred media in the art of political persuasion in the twentieth century. The dictatorial regimes that developed in Europe between the two world wars were not based on violence alone and crucial to their establishment and endurance was a seductive language used to project power through the developing mass media.4 As well as fear, repression and control there was also entertainment, celebration and a certain level of creativity. The emergence of the masses as active participants in public life, following the revolutions of the eighteenth century and the struggles for citizenship of the nineteenth, corresponded to the development of a new language of political persuasion. In his celebrated work Psychologie des foules,5 Gustave Le Bon referred to the modern era with the developing industrial and urban world characterised by the widening of political suffrage, albeit to men only as one of the ‘crowds’.6 Thus, in a radically changing world, political power, institutions and law were no longer legitimised through the divine authority of monarchy as, progressively, sovereignty required the support of the people.7 Jeffrey Schnapp notes that modern states and political movements, including those that were authoritarian, populist or conservative, employed the same language for persuasion of the masses because public opinion, either in the form of popular support, consent, or the absence of opposition, played a crucial role.8 According to David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, a characteristic of modernisation is ‘the increasing

3 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 29. 4 Fabrice d’Almeida, High Society in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), p. 5. 5 Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, the English version is

available online http://gutenberg.org/etext/445. 6 Peter Demetz, ‘Introduction: A Map of Courage’, in Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945, exh. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 10 June—3 September 2007 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), p. 1. 7 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, L’arte del manifesto politico 1914–1989. Ondate rivoluzionarie (Milan: Skira, 2005), p. 19. 8 Schnapp, L’arte del manifesto, p. 19.

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INTRODUCTION

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presence in society of mass-reproduced leisure goods such as films, paperbacks, glossy magazines, radio programs, and records all offered to consumers through the market’.9 Visual imagery and media spectacle were contributory factors in the construction of Fascist aesthetic politics that administered culture to the Italian people. Political image-making was promoted by the regime to ensure that its ideological presence permeated the daily life of the nation.10 While written and spoken propaganda was spread through publishing, press and radio, in the ‘New Vision’ era,11 the visual became essential to the cultural construction of social and political life. Traditional forms of fine art such as painting, sculpture and architecture, together with newer and modern methods of communication, mainly photography and film, were strategically put to use by the Fascist regime to translate values into a simplified and comprehensible language made up of slogans, logos and acronyms aimed at transmitting complex ideas for maximum effect with minimum effort.12 The masses had to not only be instructed on political, economic, cultural, moral and health issues but also made familiar with symbols, beliefs and myths aimed at promoting social cohesion and favouring public participation in national matters.13 In an increasingly standardised and impersonal world, it seemed relevant to respond to collective needs through a leader with an impressive appearance and original personality. The continued legitimacy of those governing depended on the capacity of a leader to create a public image that incarnated individuality while responding to collective values. The ideal leader was an individual with vision, who through communication could shape public opinion. Through the photographic process the Fascist leader’s idealised body and features could be moulded into an immediately recognisable physical model, often reinforced through text. ‘The word itself is everything: it is enough to say Duce for everyone to see,

9 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 95. 10 Adolfo Mignemi, Propaganda politica e mezzi di comunicazione di massa tra fascismo e democrazia (Novara: Edizioni Gruppo Abele, 1995), p. 25. 11 Earl A. Powell, ‘Director’s Foreword’, in Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, p. xxiii. 12 Schnapp, L’arte del manifesto, p. 22. 13 Ibid., p. 20.

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imprinted in their memory, his unmistakable profile, male, rugged, decisive, Roman, with an unforgettable stare’, wrote the illustrator Sandro Biazzi in 1941 in a celebratory review of the Duce’s better known and most significant portraits.14 This book explores the photographic image of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and investigates the impact of the medium of photography on the construction of his personality cult. The work of photographers and the management and distribution of photographs are together analysed to shed light on the evolution of his image. The book engages with the question of Fascism’s relation to modernity, highlighting the status and role of photography within a totalitarian regime as a key contributor to a developing system of mass communications. Mussolini was the founder of the National Fascist Party and prime minister of Italy from 1922 and effectively, with the abolition of other parties, dictator or Duce,15 from 1925 until 1943, with an epilogue lasting until 1945.16 He was the first modern dictator to be the object of systematic promotion in a variety of spheres including the visual media. His face, enhanced through composition and post-production, was ‘iconic’ in the sense that, like religious icons, it elicited reverence and devotion, and also being allpervasive, had become so familiar as to be instantly recognisable, like a trademark.17 The distribution of images of him played an important role in the projection of his power, both at home and abroad. His photographs appeared across a wide range of printed newspapers and magazines and can be differentiated on the basis of style and genre as well as periods (Figs. 1.1–1.2). 14 Sandro Biazzi, ‘Ritratti “grafici” del DUCE’, in L’industria della stampa, 3, 4 (1941),

111–121 (p. 111). 15 The term derived from the Latin word Dux, meaning ‘leader’. On this title, see Guido Melis, La macchina imperfetta. Immagine e realtà dello Stato fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018), pp. 177–180. 16 Mussolini was deposed in July 1943. Imprisoned, he was rescued by a Nazi commando in September 1943. The Republic was established the following month at Hitler’s suggestion. For a recent biography in English, see Richard J. B. Bosworth (new edition) Mussolini (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 17 On Italian iconic imagery, see Iconic Images in Modern Italy: Politics, Culture and Society, ed. by Martina Caruso and Alessandra Antola Swan, special issue of Modern Italy, 21, 4 (2016); on the concept of iconic in the same issue see the essay David Forgacs. ‘Gramsci Undisabled’, 345–360 (p. 346).

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Fig. 1.1 Benito Mussolini full page illustration, Tempo, 26 October 1939, Mussolini at the Congress of Naples, on 24 October 1922

The sheer quantity of images allowed different publics to ‘read’ Mussolini and feel him as part of their world. For example, children’s comics on the one hand and women’s magazines on the other deployed

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Fig. 1.2 Book cover for the biography by Giorgio Pini 1939. Original image: Mussolini salutes the crowd in Turin, 14 May 1939

images of the dictator that were in tune with the emphases and expectations of those areas of the press.18 In the context of historic charismatic

18 Paolo Murialdi, Storia del giornalismo italiano (Bologna: il Mulino, 1996), 150–151.

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personalities, modern theories of visuality can link concepts of seeing to particular political discourses and social influences.19 Over the past three decades, a few chapter-length accounts of Mussolini with photographs have been published as well as illustrated biographies supported by images from salient passages of his political career. More recently specialists have investigated particular aspects of Mussolini’s photographic representations and derivatives such as posters or postcards.20 These publications, together with recent filmic and television productions,21 have helped to revive the memory of Mussolini’s likeness, with more attention to context, sometimes presenting previously unseen images or original angles of research, consequently developing a greater awareness of the image as an historical document. However, even though Mussolini’s photographic image is known, quite often seen, and analysed within its two-dimensionality, his image has yet to be decoded. Its reading overall has remained literal as only the first layer, the visible content, has been subjected to analysis. Barthes claimed that a photograph is in itself ‘flat’ and one cannot penetrate nor reach

19 See Pierluigi Basso Fossali and Maria Giulia Dondero, Semiotica della fotografia. Investigazioni teoriche e pratiche d’analisi (Rimini: Guaraldi, 2006); Roland Barthes, Mythologies, selected and trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage, 1993); Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. by Richard Howard (London: Vintage, 1993); John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972); John Berger, About Looking (London: Bloomsbury,1980); Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay, eds., Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight (New York: Routledge, 1996); Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion, 2001); Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Gail Finney, eds., Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany: Text as Spectacle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Hal Foster, Vision and Visuality (Seattle: Bay Press, 1988); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, trans. by Tavistock/Routledge (London: Routledge, 1989); Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1979). 20 See John Fraser, ‘Propaganda on the Picture Postcard’, Oxford Art Journal, 2, 3, (1980), 39–47; Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003); Jeffrey Schnapp, L’arte del manifesto. 21 Mussolini and I, dir. Alberto Negrin (HBO, 1985) [on DVD]; Il giovane Mussolini (Rai Due, 1993) [Television]; Benito Mussolini (Rai Tre 13, August 2010) [Television]; Obiettivo Mussolini dir. Graziano Conversano (Sky History Channel 407, 12–19 May 2007) [Television]; Il segreto di Mussolini dir. Fabrizio Laurenti e Gianfranco Norelli (Rai Tre, 13 August 2010) [Television]; Tea with Mussolini dir. Franco Zeffirelli (G2 Films, 1999) [Film]; Vincere dir. Marco Bellocchio (01 Distribution, 2009) [Film]; Sono tornato dir. Luca Miniero (2018).

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into it.22 In a similar critical vein, Susan Sontag argued that photographs, which cannot themselves ‘explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy’.23 The latent content of Mussolini’s photographic representation needs to be read to reconstruct the function of his photographs as tools of persuasion and establish the connection between visual content, the editorial process and the image control exercised by the dictatorial power. Approaching Mussolini’s photographs in a more holistic way as both objects and expression of a mentality can reveal new aspects relevant to the materiality of his images. Rather than a written biography of Mussolini with supporting images, the aim here is to review the biography of photographs used as images to construct his cult as Duce. Where possible, adding data such as who his photographers were, how they worked, the modalities of production and editorial intervention as well as the diffusion of his images or where they appeared. Besides problems concerning the mimetic reading of the medium, the researcher must confront the nature of the material examined. Images made for the purpose of propaganda were used as a political instrument aimed at provoking emotions such as admiration, devotion and intimidation.24 In line with the definition given by Forgacs and Gundle, propaganda is intended as a type of ‘communication designed to express the opinions, beliefs, or values of an organised collective group and to persuade others of its truth, or at least of its ideological force’.25 In an age progressively dominated by images, Fascist visual propaganda referred to the narratives that were created not only to record events but also influence the way in which those events were viewed at the time. Photographs of Mussolini are vivid testimonies to the official version of the history of Fascist Italy and the way in which the regime during its tenure wanted events and his personality to be perceived and remembered.26 The analysis of the photographic promotion of Mussolini is closely connected with the process of selection and interpretation of the

22 Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 106. 23 Susan Sontag, On Photography, p. 23. 24 Gabriele D’Autilia, L’indizio e la prova. La storia nella fotografia (Milan: Mondadori,

2005), p. 166. 25 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 214. 26 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 152.

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sources.27 It is therefore essential to bear in mind the official nature of this material since photographs were produced, controlled, and diffused exclusively by authorised government agents. Photographs of Mussolini available to us today were produced officially and, contrary to what occurred during the First World War, when photographs were taken both by professionals and soldiers acting as amateur photographers,28 unauthorised images of Mussolini are not known. Although improbable, it would be reductive to categorically exclude the existence of unauthorised photographs taken by private citizens who happened to own a camera, photograph the Duce during official events and have these photographs published during the regime. The nature of material for analysis of the cult is drawn principally from images published during Fascism and accessible now as archival material. Throughout this book effort is made to avoid accepting the testimony of Mussolini’s Fascist propaganda material at face value. As well as trying not to read images exclusively on the basis of what is visible, the analysis engages with the language these images used in order to understand them as documents, and be thus evaluated as evidence of a rational and intentional effort to manipulate and indoctrinate. Photographs of Mussolini are documents that give access to the way in which the regime which produced and diffused his images viewed itself.29 Considering the theorist Jean Baudrillard’s discussion on the infiltration of the media in real life,30 and Andy Grundberg’s claim that the photograph is no longer a ‘mirror with a memory’ illustrating the visual truth of objects, persons and events, but is a manipulated construction,31 Linda Williams explains that the postmodern distrust of the image is due perhaps to the faith once placed in the ability of the camera to reflect objective truths. ‘What was once a “mirror with a memory” can now only reflect 27 Ibid., p. 165. 28 Adolfo Mignemi, Lo sguardo e l’immagine. La fotografia come documento storico

(Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), pp. 110–132. 29 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 145. 30 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Simulacra and Simulations’ in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings,

ed. by Mark Poster (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 169–187. 31 Andy Grundberg, ‘Ask It No Questions: The Camera Can Lie’, New York Times, Sunday, 12 August 1990, Arts and Leisure, p. 1. electronic version http://www.nytimes. com/1990/08/12/arts/photography-view-ask-it-noquestions-the-camera-can-lie.html? pagewanted=all&src=pm.

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another mirror’.32 The extensive quantity of historical images transmitted by today’s media ‘weakens the link between public memory and personal experience’.33 An ever increasing quantity of images make up our past and these can be brought to the fore without spatial and temporal context, as an element of the ever present. The reading of one specific image may help to clarify the discourse around the construction of charismatic personalities in the media and politics and illustrate the method employed in this book. When a photograph is used publicly and presents an appearance or an event which may be distant from us or its original meaning, it offers information that is ‘severed from all lived experience’.34 Photographs can be considered the conceptual merger between the behaviour and psychological responses displayed by the ‘fans’ of political figures and those of cinema stars.35 The camera acts similarly to human visual perception in selecting reality but differs as it can fix and hold a precise instant. Before the invention of the camera, through the mind’s eye the faculty of memory could construct an image of a past event but ‘unlike memory, photographs do not in themselves preserve meaning’.36 Sontag points out that ‘understanding is based on how something functions. And functioning takes place in time, and must be explained in time. Only that which narrates can make us understand’.37 In this photograph (Fig. 1.3), deliberately reproduced here without a caption, as is often the case with Fascist photographic propaganda material in archives, nearly all compositional elements seem uninteresting and uninviting. The subjects, taken from behind, are not recognisable, the space appears crammed with no noticeable action except for one of the women writing, overall it is an ordinary and neutral scene. If space and subjects are indecipherable, set against the conventional furniture some technological devices, such as a laptop and smart phone, help us to 32 Linda Williams, ‘Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary’, in Film Quarterly, 3, 46 (1993), 9–21 (p. 10). 33 Williams, ‘Mirrors Without Memories’, p. 10. 34 Berger, About Looking, p. 56. 35 Julie Gottlieb, ‘The Marketing of Megalomania: Celebrity, Consumption and the Development of Political Technology in the British Union of Fascists’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41, (2006), 35–55 (p. 44). 36 Berger, About Looking, p. 55. 37 Sontag, On Photography, p. 23.

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Fig. 1.3 Photograph deliberately reproduced without caption (Ansa)

place the image in time. What we see appears to be current and could almost be anywhere in the Western world, perhaps a public space or office although the furniture fixings refer to a bygone era. Only when the image is anchored by text or connected to a precise context does it acquire relevance and become interesting, to be read for what it communicates in addition to what it shows. Frequently images are seen as having a mimetic quality and read as a copy of reality, rarely though are they questioned for their polysemic quality as producers of multilayered meanings with latent content. This image selected for its political significance because directly linked to the underlying theme addressed in this book could not be more relevant. Vision, as a cultural construction made from both what is seen and how it is seen, once situated in a particular context makes the image ideologically meaningful despite its apparent dullness.

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Fig. 1.4 Close-up of Alessandra Mussolini signing the photographs of her grandfather for the Lega Nord MP Carolina Lussana, 12 June 2012—(Ansa)

The photograph shows the Duce’s granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini in the Italian Parliament,38 ‘paparazzata’ (furtively photographed) when approached by a parliamentary representative from the Lega Nord (Northern League Party) who asked her to autograph some photographs of her grandfather the dictator. This episode, reported in an article by Corriere della Sera on 14 June 2012,39 provoked some controversy as it took place in the chamber of deputies during a vote. Looking closer, the photographs Alessandra Mussolini was signing are known to anyone familiar with the period and later will be examined with similar if not identical types of images (Fig. 1.4).

38 Alessandra Mussolini is an Italian politician and has been a Member of Parliament for various centre right and right-wing parties as well as for the European Parliament. 39 Corriere della Sera, 14 June 2012, p. 15 (online archive version).

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The photographs in question signed during a parliamentary sitting of the current republican and democratic Italy refer to two Fascist propaganda images of the Duce both in uniform, one from the battle of wheat in 1936 with Mussolini standing on a tractor, and the other of him saluting the crowd from a well-known Istituto Luce series of photographs from 1939.40 Like a play of mirrors, in this photograph of a photograph, we can measure the power of the past through the traces it leaves in the present. The context of the present revives the past when recorded elements, here as photographs, become the subject of the contemporary exchange. It is purely coincidental that the deputy seated immediately below Alessandra Mussolini has a head that, in its baldness, recalls that of her grandfather, but the coincidence undoubtedly adds something to the interpretation of the image. The public photograph separated from context becomes a dead object which can then be put to an arbitrary use,41 a fragmentary representation of past events and a selective trace which whenever seen is the sum total of its rewriting through time. Exemplified by the image of Alessandra Mussolini signing photographs of her grandfather, it is scarcely surprising to note that over seventy years after his death, Mussolini through the continued circulation of his image and dynastic political descendants42 still stirs vivid memories in Italy and abroad. He continues to inspire ‘fascination, consternation, admiration and fear’.43 His oratory and gestures have survived in the collective memory of at least two generations, overshadowing two decades of dictatorship, and despite the humiliating spectacle of his death, the disaster of a world war and the failure and rejection of Fascism. Mussolini’s ‘magnetic personality’ whether mocked, despised or celebrated has not been forgotten. Almost three generations later, the figure of Mussolini 40 Benito Mussolini giving a speech on a tractor in Aprilia (Rome) also reproduced as a postcard in 1936 and Mussolini in profile making a Fascist salute, Turin 14 May 1939. 41 Berger, About Looking, p. 60. 42 A third descendant of Italy’s long-time fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is entering the

political arena. Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini, Benito Mussolini’s great-grandson, whose name is taken from one of ancient Rome’s most famous rulers, is running as a candidate in European elections for the far-right Brothers of Italy Party. Recently, in April 2019, he posted a photograph on his Facebook account of him in front of the Fascist period entrance to a sport stadium that evokes Mussolini, in https://www.tpi.it/2019/05/16/ caio-mussolini-stadioandria-polemiche/. 43 Robert A. Ventresca, ‘Mussolini’s Ghost’: Italy’s Duce in History and Memory, History & Memory, 18, 1 (2006), 86–119.

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continues to exercise an appeal, and the Duce’s fame goes beyond the cult formed around his person when alive to the extent that his face, gestures and physical presence are still instantly recognisable. Although difficult to establish precisely how many people during the regime saw Mussolini in close proximity, it is reasonable to assume that most Italians would have known what he looked like from photography, along with newsreels and documentary films. And since photographs have an analogical quality that infuses them with direct resemblance to their physical referents,44 they represented the closest experience for many people in their relation to the ‘visible’ and living Mussolini. Today the large quantity of photographic material reproduced in publications or kept in public or private archives and accessible online provides visual documentation crucial to understanding the political use of photographs for propaganda purposes by the Fascist regime and its leader. ‘Il Duce’ was the object of systematic promotion and adoration using a plurality of techniques. He was extensively photographed in informal as well as official poses, with his image seen everywhere, in both public and private spaces. Being accessible, transferable, portable and easily massproduced, photographs became the principal vehicle for the circulation of Mussolini’s image.45 Images of his head, body, expressions and postures were reproduced during the regime in their millions and made known to Italians and the rest of the world, in a variety of forms via a range of print media such as newspapers, periodicals, posters, postcards and stamps. Although the audience for much of this printed literature was the educated middle class, the fact that his photographs were reproduced on media such as posters on walls, as well as book or magazine covers, allowed Mussolini’s figure to be ‘read’ and absorbed by a broader public. In addition, the increasing differentiation of styles and genres which varied according to the reading market, such as the development of women’s fiction and magazines or fiction and non-fiction texts for children, meant that his image could be intelligible at different levels. But rather than dissipating the effect through fragmentation, variety and diversification could be used as an oppressive device to promote a dominant, even totally hegemonic visual model. 44 Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 6. 45 Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 5.

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The visual content that formed what can be imagined as a long sequence of a multiform series of photographs forming Mussolini’s ‘photobook’46 was carefully constructed throughout the regime and designed as a highly controlled and selected graphic repertoire. Thanks to a strategic use of photography, his image was the primary vehicle of expression which, in partnership with the written word, created a form of communication that at times could appear as a dialogue. Emotionally charged, the photographic representations of the Duce, in particular his portraits, were part of a system of codes with both a grammar and syntax. Never neutral, the representation of the leader, despite its deceptive simplicity, was far from being a ‘mirror’ or a literal representation of reality, since it involved a saturated ideological text with the leader only seemingly connected with his audience. Even though perceived as mutual, this communication was in fact visually composed, and imposed, as a monologue based as it was on an extended system of control and censorship criteria. Photographs were either banned, doctored, suppressed or manipulated in order to present the viewer with an idealised image of the leader. Laden with significance, Mussolini’s images had the purpose not only of spreading his appearance and thus contributing to the diffusion of his likeness, but also acted as a visual narrative where an ideological text comprehensible to those who viewed his images aimed at shaping the viewer’s impressions and attitudes. In the construction of this pervasive language, Mussolini played a central role as the principal subject, vigilant supervisor and manager of his own image. He revealed from the beginning, as a political activist and journalist, an awareness and understanding of the potential and penetrating power of the political use of images for propaganda purposes. However, once he became Duce, Mussolini in a non-democratic polity such as the Fascist state did not need to ‘court the media’ as other political leaders were known to have done abroad and in Italy.47 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, was known for

46 On new approaches to reading the photobook and how meaning is shaped by an image’s interaction with text and context, see Patrizia Di Bello, Colette Wilson and Shamoon Zamir, eds., The Photobook (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012). 47 Jean Lipman-Blumen, The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians and How We Can Survive Them (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 164.

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astutely granting certain favoured reporters exclusive interviews.48 In Italy before unification, the nationalist republican leader Giuseppe Mazzini, while committed with political hero Giuseppe Garibaldi to the pursuit of the idea of a republican and democratic Italy, had already considerable experience in producing propaganda and creating better relations with the press. Later, Giovanni Giolitti, five times the prime minister of Italy between 1892 and 1921, was reputed to have informed the press about photo opportunities.49 Although an anecdote, it nevertheless coincides with the trend of politicians, such as Giolitti, becoming aware of their role within a changing world in which the press provided a crucial tool in the creation of fame and visibility.50 After the kidnap and murder of the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti in 1924, and the imposition of dictatorship in 1925 when dissent was not only refused but also punished and the liberty of the press curtailed, the Duce’s image management took a decisive turn. The regime’s rules governing censorship developed into a repressive and pervasive system. Making sure that ‘no one under his governance could possess the freedom to write phrases which had once served him so well’,51 Mussolini ensured that as well as spoken and written communication, the visual had also to be constructed and controlled. From 1927, when the photographic department at the government-run Istituto Luce was founded, no images could be published without permission.52 Not surprisingly therefore, the imperative visual presence of the leader was at the centre of what Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi calls the phantasmagoria of rituals and symbols where, ‘in a time of new technologies […] with

48 Ibid., p. 164. 49 Tita di Domenicantonio, Adolfo Porry-Pastorel un fotoreporter leggendario, private

publication (Palestrina: Circolo Culturale Prenestino “R. Simeoni”, 1988), p. 13. 50 Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 95. 51 Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 214. 52 As stated in Art. 187 ‘Photographs for publication whatever the intended purpose,

with the exception of particular urgency, must be authorised by the Director General’, b. 247: Ist. Naz. Luce, reg. ff. 4–5, Istituto Nazionale Luce, ‘Regolamento e Servizi’ (no date) at Archivio di Stato Forlì; also: “(…) photographs for publication must be presented to the prime minister’s Press Office for authorisation” from 21.10.1933, Claudio Matteini, Ordini alla stampa (Rome: Editrice Polilibraria Italiana, 1945), p. 37, in Mignemi, ‘La costruzione degli strumenti di propaganda’, Propaganda, p. 63.

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photographic images and newsreels, appearances on airplanes and motorbikes, and speeches from balconies and extravagant podiums, Mussolini dominated the Fascist spectacle’.53 A powerful, controlled and strategic use of media, the most pervasive of which was photography, was put in place by the regime to emphasise and magnify what had been at the beginning of the dictator’s political career only an intuitive and limited way of managing his own public figure. Mussolini’s overpowering sharp and aggressive rhetorical style together with his ‘truculent and commanding gaze’ did not go unnoticed, as these basic elements were perceived as seductive, at least by his initial admirers,54 and formed the body of his expressive language. During the Ventennio, the twenty years of the regime, as if a visual loudspeaker photography was used in a synergic effort through differing agents, in what nowadays would be called the communication industry, towards the construction of the cult of the leader that transformed Mussolini’s figure into an icon. The figure of ‘God-like artist-creator evidenced in Mussolini’s identification of the “masses” with dead matter, a block of marble to be shaped’,55 had to be consistently publicised through Fascist propaganda by portraying and presenting him as the sole creator, choreographer and controller of his own image. Photographers became anonymous and considered as technicians or practical executors of prefigured ideas, likewise the various administrative, financial and technical operators working in the increasingly modernised industry such as entrepreneurs, operators, typographers, newspaper editors, seemingly did not exist independently but were mere extensions of his will. The intention in this book is not to challenge Mussolini’s oppressive control over the supervision of his public image. As well as journalists, editors, writers and artists, the institutions and individuals who were involved in producing, reproducing, approving and rejecting photographs of Mussolini were certainly not allowed to freely interpret his image, let alone ridicule it or criticise it. On the other hand, if we accept the received notion of Mussolini controlling his image as its sole creator, even in the material and technical sense, it would also mean accepting 53 Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 12. 54 G. Rizzo, D’Annunzio e Mussolini: la verità sui loro rapporti (Bologna: Cappelli, 1960), p. 21; in Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 146. 55 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 13.

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at face value the legendary figure fabricated through his own propaganda machine. To examine his photographic projection in the public arena, it is necessary to deconstruct his mythical and superhuman-like figure precisely by using his and the Fascist propaganda voice in a critical and non-literal way. The book is divided into narratives that examine the context of the photographic image, including that of Mussolini up until the beginning of Fascism, the discussion around Mussolini’s personal photographic language and how his photographs were produced. According to the method devised in the book, photographs of Mussolini are treated both as images and objects, a logic applied when illustrating the different narratives in the book, which consider how the image was made, what it looks like and how it was circulated. Images selected are from those published during his lifetime, with occasional reference to unpublished images, in order to present a summary of Mussolini’s quantitatively vast photographic representation, while subjecting individual images to analysis according to the underlying narratives of the book. Ideally, to transform the image from illustration into a document requires establishing its metamorphosis, and where possible may include unpublished images, such as two in the sequence of Mussolini’s arrest in 1915, to establish a context around the published image. In the absence of scholarly works dealing with the image-making process that supported the cult of the Duce, it is necessary to raise awareness of the need to deconstruct his image and broadly present its main phases, thus highlighting the opportunity for future specific studies of areas presented in the book. Rather than presenting definitive solutions, this book seeks to emphasise the relevance of studying Mussolini’s photographs in a comprehensive and critical way, as documents as well as meaningful historical material in their own right. Overall it presents a larger reflection on the status and role of photography as a modern medium of mass communication within a totalitarian regime instrumental in understanding the cult of the Duce. Technological and social development made images of Mussolini symbols of a shift within the organisation of persuasion, from the divine right of kings, to the modern twentieth-century ruler who represented the nation.

PART I

Setting the Scene

CHAPTER 2

The Photograph as a Source and Agent of History

Debating Mussolini’s Image: Viewing, Reviewing and Documenting Vision, the visual, what the eye sees and ways of seeing have become central to the cultural construction of social life in Western societies. More than other sensorial representations such as aural or tactile, today the world is becoming visually represented and interpreted through a wide range of visual technologies, film, video, digital and photography generate millions of images every day. Thanks to the large number of disparate sources available to historians, research has moved to less conventional areas, the history of mentalities, the body and material culture now being an integral part of cultural analysis.1 Combining seemingly diverse sources and approaches in order to produce more holistic accounts has become

1 On history and other disciplines and the use of non-textual sources, see seminal works by Walter Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1935); John Berger (Ways of Seeing, 1972); Roland Barthes (Camera Lucida, 1980), Susan Sontag (On Photography, 1971) influenced succeeding publications on the theme. See in particular Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), pp. 9–19; Adolfo Mignemi, Lo sguardo e l’immagine. La fotografia come documento storico (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), pp. 9–25; Gabriele D’Autilia, L’indizio e la prova. La storia nella fotografia (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2005), pp. 125–156; Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, 2nd edn (London: Hodder, 2006), pp. 59–86 and pp. 150–172, Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies (London: Sage, 2007), pp. 1–27.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_2

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increasingly popular among scholars in the last few decades. As a consequence, material previously used as support is now considered a primary source where the products of industrialised society between the two world wars, in particular photographs, are regarded on a par with traditional text-based documents. In Italy, the role played by images in the spectacularisation of politics during the Fascist regime was significant as a means of communication in the strategy of mass persuasion. Today photographs of Mussolini bear witness to his image management as an essential element in the fabrication of his personality cult, and are an indispensable source for the researcher. Over the last four decades, photographs included as illustrations have been a typical feature of publications on Fascism where the tendency is to use images of the Duce to illustrate points made in the text.2 In particular, the illustrated biography, with the advance of digital printing technology and targeted markets,3 has progressively been made more attractive to the reader. Images almost exclusively used as found in archives or collections are displayed detached from their original viewing site principally in support of text specificity. For example, emphasis is given to photographs that illustrate rituals and symbols pertinent to the construction of the Duce’s myth,4,5 and in some more recent publications his photographers are increasingly referred to.6 The construction of the image of Mussolini 2 Ernesto Laura, Immagine del fascismo. La conquista del potere [1915–1925] (Milan: Longanesi, 1973). 3 Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008). 4 Renzo De Felice and Luigi Goglia, Storia fotografica del fascismo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1981); Mussolini. Il mito (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1983). The appeal of symbols nurtured by Fascism is the underlying theme, the importance of the relation between aesthetics and politics in Fascist Italy and elaborates the concept of Mussolini the politician-artist, Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 82. 5 This theme had previously been analysed by several other authors, who referred to Mussolini as a ‘stagemanager’ and actor, see Piero Melograni, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, Journal of Contemporary History, 11, 4, (1976), 221–237 (p. 226). 6 A few of the better known photographers who portrayed Mussolini over a number of

years such as Ghitta Carell, Vincenzo Carrese and Adolfo Porry Pastorel are mentioned, see for example in Giuliana Scimé, Fotografia della libertà e delle dittature, da Sander a Cartier-Bresson. 1922–1946 (Milan: Mazzotta, 1995); Chessa, Dux, p. 12, including Vitullo, a forgotten independent photographer who is said to have been one of Mussolini’s favourites.

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is often only part of a larger discussion on the importance of aesthetics in Fascism,7 where Mussolini is usually referred to as a ‘stagemanager’ and actor.8 Based on selected photographs the visual representations of the quintessential space for the visibility of Fascist power, the piazza, are illustrated by potent images, where the Duce’s presence is evoked through choreographed crowds.9 (Fig. 2.1) Power is also illustrated through images of the Duce’s body as leader of the masses showing the public and the private man in almost geometrical terms, where ‘horizontality’ meant proximity and ‘verticality’ implied the exaltation of his moral and political stature.10 Photographs are presented as a direct testimony to illustrate, support or authenticate the text and document the relation between power and society.11 Only recently have historians begun to build on established practices to consider the Duce’s photographs as primary sources. In support of their use as illustrations, thinking about photographs of Mussolini as physical objects can generate further insights. In particular their function, production and use in support of the fabrication of the leader can be unpacked. Adding provenance, purpose and circulation may help complete the biography of the

7 Aspects of the aesthetic impact of the regime have been treated by historians and other scholars concerned with symbols and images. Luisa Passerini’s Mussolini immaginario (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991) is an example of a scholarly work entirely dedicated to the myth of the Duce, where the author highlights the importance of photography. Passerini explains that her use of the term ‘imaginary’ is relevant not to photographic but rather to ‘mental’ and ‘emotional’ images. The material she analyses draws exclusively on imaginary physical features of the Duce drawn from written accounts. In Fascist Spectacle, Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi demonstrates how the Duce could be perceived iconic even when absent with his presence evoked, p. 49. The religious character of Fascism is emphasised in Emilio Gentile’s study Il culto del littorio (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1998) ‘where the regime’s ritual events, the commemoration of Fascist martyrs and pattern of the Duce’s personality cult were all elements of a secular religion which the regime presented to Italians and indeed wished to impose on them’ in Sergio Luzzatto, ‘The Political Culture of Fascist Italy’, Contemporary European History, 8 (1999), 317–334 (p. 323). 8 Piero Melograni, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, p. 226. 9 Liliana Ellena, ‘Rifare gli italiani. Spazi, appartenenze e identità nello sguardo del

Luce’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini (1900–1945), ed. by Giovanni De Luna, Gabriele D’Autilia and Luca Criscenti, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), p. 203. 10 Sergio Luzzatto, ‘Niente tubi di stufa sulla testa’, in L’Italia del Novecento, pp. 117–

201. 11 Ellena, ‘Rifare gli italiani’ in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 203.

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Fig. 2.1 The Duce during a rally in Bolzano, 1935, as seen in the weekly Radiocorriere 1–7 September 1935

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image in order to establish the site of production, while context can identify the site of audiencing, that is, how an image was made, what it looked like and how it was seen.12

From Illustrations to Objects of Fabrication Engaging with non-textual sources, different from those that are exclusively text-based, poses questions about methods and approaches. It is conventional to divide sources into primary (the original documents or ‘raw materials’) and secondary (those created by historians or other commentators from the past).13 Photographs are considered to be selfexplanatory and thus ‘privileged’ sources, as it is thought they do not necessarily require particular technical skills to understand them since they are commonly seen as ‘windows onto past times rather than artful constructions in their own right’.14 To be informed about the basic nature of photographs and modes of production can help understand how they function and clarify meanings expressed through their visual grammar thus adhering to their flexible nature of being both illustrations and objects of fabrication. Schematically, the various levels of reading a photograph begin with the physical level, that is a physical object, a print.15 The second level is descriptive, the image the print represents. Embedded in this level is another, the perceptive, the flat image we see transformed through a mental process which gives the image depth.16 To have some basic understanding of the mode of production and likely audiences of the photographic base can help to put these sources into their historical context.17 For example, to know more about the various individuals involved in the taking of the image and making of the print can reveal 12 Rose, Visual Methodologies, pp. 22–27. 13 Jordanova, History in Practice, p. 38. 14 Ibid., p. 164. 15 Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs (London: Phaidon, 2007), p. 10. 16 Ibid., p. 97. 17 The term ‘photographic base’ refers to a base of paper, card or material coated with a light sensitive emulsion which when exposed fixes the image from the negative (or negative plate) as a physical object. ‘A photograph is flat, it has edges, and it is static; it doesn’t move. While it is flat, it is not a true plane. The print has a physical dimension’, in Shore, The Nature of Photographs, p. 15.

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a world that was previously hidden. A network of individuals and institutions were actively involved in the production and circulation of the Duce’s image. These individuals’ political affiliation or relationship with power, and with those who commissioned the photographs, are all factors to be considered. Prints though are rarely studied independently from other types of evidence. Not considering the print as both a physical object and a representation has led to the interpretation of the documentary photograph as a ‘reflection or window history’.18 Rather than treat images of the Duce critically, as mediations or constructions, his images are nearly always interpreted in isolation and exclusively by looking at their visual content. This can lead to their being seen as a reflection of life, as if by looking at them one could see directly what it was like to experience them then. Ludmilla Jordanova notes: Historians writing illustrated books often fail to recognise this point. The pictures become decorative add-ons: they are not integrated into historical arguments, but are treated as unproblematic illustrations of insights arrived at by conventional means. The images are not contextualised in the way any written source would be.19

Archives, in and outside Italy, hold countless images of the Duce, but comparatively little supporting written evidence has come down to us directly from the period. And even though historians recognise that ‘papers spread between a thousand public and private institutions, confirms the existence of a complex network between political power and those responsible for his images’,20 photographs are usually seen in isolation and not combined with written accounts of their production, editorial process and circulation. By contrast, there is a vast amount of descriptive writing focused on the image of the Duce. That is why it seems increasingly necessary to look in other directions as we are now more aware of the need to consider images as constructed objects, tools of persuasion and tactile media for communicating values. This approach 18 Jordanova, History in Practice, p. 165. 19 Ibid., p. 165. 20 Gabriele D’Autilia, ‘Le fonti per la storia del Luce: un mosaico (quasi) completo’, in Fonti d’archivio per la storia del LUCE 1925–1945, ed. by Marco Pizzo and Gabriele D’Autilia (Rome: Istituto Nazionale Luce, 2004), p. 13.

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implies more flexible and holistic ways of looking at heterogeneous collections of sources and it requires informed decisions about how to handle this material. An ‘original’ image is inherently elusive. For example, the well-known image of Mussolini brandishing the sword of Islam in 1937 discussed in this book (Figs. 11.1 and 11.2), when published on various occasions differed from the ‘original’ print. These images need to be considered as only a partial reproduction of what the camera recorded, as once reproduced from the negative and edited, it was conceptually renegotiated as many times as the print was processed. To look at visual sources more critically can help avoid their reductive or even arbitrary use and a wider range of evidence could provide richer insights.21 The more case studies produced for each image the stronger any argument will be. Ideally the balance ‘between respecting the logics of different media, while integrating them into historical arguments, not leaving them as decorative texts’.22 The overall outcome would be a comprehensive view of the past with a greater awareness of the critical skills needed to use, evaluate and integrate differing types of sources. The holistic use of photographs and their reading at different levels, physical, depictive and mental, is still relatively rare in literature dealing with the aestheticisation of politics during Fascism. The concept of photographs as agents of history, identified through their capacity to influence collective behaviour, forms and consolidates group identity, conditions political choices and lastly constructs memory.23 Images predominantly have been used in support of a comment or observation, where readers are encouraged to look at photographs as a form of authentication. What now follows is an overview about themes and issues within broader academic debate and the field of the study of photography that bear on the issue of the representation of Mussolini with the last section seeking to explain and also reflect on the research process that resulted in this book.

21 Jordanova, History in Practice, p. 167. 22 Ibid., p. 166. 23 D’Autilia, L’indizio e la prova, p. 158.

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Fascist Photography Intentionality Intentionality refers here to the fabrication of the Duce’s image and the role played by the photographic medium in its construction. The variegated Fascist visual production was not simply a reflection of Italian complexity and social fragmentation, but part of a conscious plan about ‘image politics’ directed from above by a regime able to be sufficiently flexible to adapt a range of products and registers for different periods, sectors and levels of audience.24 This brings the issue of intentionality into question as it presupposes a level of awareness to maintain authority. Where coercion and violence, overtly or implied, are present within the strategy for consent during Mussolini’s dictatorship, issues about intentionality become problematic with philosophical concepts of determinism and functionalism still widely debated among historians of Fascism discussing consent.25 The effectiveness of propaganda, for example, has been taken for granted until now, and has yet to be measured.26 Likewise, the accepted notion of the dictator as sole choreographer of his image, at least from the technical point of view is not generally questioned. Photographs of Mussolini are often drawn from the same source that produced the original propaganda, but to complement historical research reference needs to be made to the various stages of framing, production, editing and circulation throughout the regime. Thus issues raised by the question of consent require new approaches when studying the role of visual media during Fascism. Furthermore regarding the leader’s image, any degree of intentionality on the part of the regime questions the idea of self-representation, since affirming regime control and manipulation implies that something

24 Laura Malvano, Fascismo e politica dell’immagine (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1988), pp. 32–33. 25 See, for example, Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (New York: Hodder, 2002), pp. 1–12; Anthony L. Cardoza, ‘Recasting the Duce for the New Century: Recent Scholarship on Mussolini and Italian Fascism’, The Journal of Modern History, 3, 77 (2005), pp. 722– 737; Ferdinando Cordova, Il ‘consenso’ imperfetto. Quattro capitoli sul fascismo (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 2010). 26 D’Autilia, ‘Le fonti per la storia del Luce’, in Fonti d’archivio, p. 17.

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managed to escape Mussolini’s exclusive direction.27 Mussolini is still largely accepted as the principal artificer of his own image, yet even the more informal and private pictures of Mussolini should be looked at to determine whether they are the result of a construction. Regime propagandists, officials, photographers and mainly Mussolini are considered as being concerned with harmonising the two images, the private and the public self. This strategy could create continuity between nature and artifice, between ‘real’ images and studied poses to present the leader as prosaic or extraordinary, human and super human at the same time.28 The visual representation of power and forms of communication in a growing mass society at the beginning of the twentieth century puts focus on the photographic representation of a changing Italy where photographs document both continuity and a break with the past.29 Particularly relevant as a method is to indicate how photographs of Fascist events were rarely isolated images but part of a sequence with a choreography whose authorship should be established or at least questioned. The outlined method, that looks at selected images as an instrument for reporting history, a source to learn about history, and as agents of history, is a constant reference in this book. Physiognomy Physical perception was influenced by the popular science of physiognomy, a theory of bodily cognition current in the Western world between 1918 and 1945. The ‘physiognomic obsession of the nineteenth century’,30 also defined as the ‘doctrine of the exterior’,31 was the underlying theme that helped establish built-in racial prejudices during the

27 Originally published in Repubblica, 10–11 July 1983, the article was reprinted with the title ‘I ritratti del Duce’, in Italo Calvino, Saggi 1945–1985 (Milan: Mondadori, 1995), pp. 2878–2891. 28 Calvino, Saggi 1945–1985, pp. 2878–2891. 29 Antonio Gibelli, ‘Un’epoca in transizione: dall’età liberale alla società di massa’, in

L’Italia del Novecento, pp. 3–36. 30 Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 31 Ibid, p. 150.

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interwar period. This was translated into the tendency towards a literalness that conditioned the inter-war society’s gaze. The trend, aided by visual pointers, such as posters, paintings and photographs, formed a visual culture that used the scientific and realistic power attributed to images to transform metaphors into supposed scientifically-based proofs. In Fascist Italy photography, used in support of a pedagogical project with the intention of unifying morally and ideologically a new and fragmented nation, fulfilled the national project to record, catalogue, transmit, share and exalt the same values for the many Italies, forming a country in search of a national identity. In the attempt to embrace a reality formed by infinite categories of images, both landscape and people were captured by the camera. Portraits of ‘types’ or ‘typical’ humans helped anthropologists, such as Cesare Lombroso, or sociologists, such as Leone Carpi, construct a national photographic catalogue albeit in negative terms.32 A notable lack of texts exclusively treating the photographic representation of the Duce as a non-verbal language is surprising, considering that the visual representation of twentieth-century European dictators is increasingly attracting the attention of historians.33 There have though been attempts at mapping some of Mussolini’s physical features and postures as portrayed in photographs that are considered significant elements of his charisma. Typically his closeshaved head, his square jaw and staring eyes have been mentioned by authors as symbols of his virility.34 Postcards made from photographs of his many speeches, where the prevalent model was that of the theatrical mask, were similar to what 32 Ibid., p. 38. 33 See papers by Catriona Kelly, Jan Plamper and Alice Mocanescu presented at the

conference on Stalin and the Lesser Gods, ‘The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorship in Comparative Perspective’, held at the European University Institute in Florence in May 2003, which resulted in the volume: The Leader Cult in Communist Dictatorships: Stalin and the Eastern Bloc, ed. by Balázs Apor, Jan C. Behrends, Polly Jones and E. A. Rees (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), in Alexis Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs: Emotions for the People’, Contemporary European History, 3, 13 (2004), 255–280; Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007) a recent biography with photographs purely for illustrative purposes, similar to other Mussolini biographies. Also relevant are two exhibitions, one in 2007, ‘Art and Propaganda’ in the first half of twentieth century, and more recently ‘Hitler and the Germans’, in October 2010, on the personality cult of the Nazi dictator, both at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. 34 Mille facce per un Duce was the title of the whole cultural insert in which various pieces by different authors appeared: Italo Calvino ‘Cominciò con un cilindro’, Alberto

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the public was used to seeing on the large screen.35 The role of gestures in relation to speech suggests this was modelled on silent films where a melodramatic, almost grotesque, manner of recitation was necessary (Fig. 2.2). Sound and Image The study of Mussolini’s visual appeal, where the acoustic element was an important feature of the cult, is a representation of Mussolini’s aural charisma.36 The leader ‘felt’ rather than ‘seen’ and almost ‘swallowed’ by the large surrounding crowd was a visual strategy occasionally used by the regime to illustrate the Duce’s sensorial charisma. Rhetoric as a charismatic feature preceding the dissemination and diffusion of the cult of the body refers to Mussolini’s oratorical skills when, as the owner-editor of a newspaper, he is described as a speaker who ‘sparkled’ for his ‘emotionality’ and the ‘impulsiveness’ which rendered his words spellbinding.37 According to an official police report of the time, his ‘speechifying’ adopted a ‘crudely populist tone’.38 Mussolini’s rhetorical style had a phonetic repertoire that underscored his presentation, talking through clenched teeth with groups of words punctuated by pauses, the whole delivered in a staccato rhythm.39 The timbre of the dictator’s voice as an influential factor in provoking an emotional appeal in the audience, his voice and oratorical techniques were elements that contributed to the spectacularisation of his speeches which, via radio and thousands of loudspeakers installed in the piazze, alongside photographs, contributed to a sense of his omnipresence.40

Arbasino ‘Il Canto del Pipistrello’, Luigi Malerba ‘Quella voce che mi insegue’, and Enzo Forcella ‘E finì come Popeye’, in La Repubblica, 10–11 July 1983. 35 Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), pp. 127–128. 36 Schmölders, Hitler’s Face, p. 37. 37 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 125. 38 For the full report, see Renzo De Felice, Mussolini il rivoluzionario 1883–1920 (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), pp. 725–737. 39 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 86. 40 Mention of loudspeakers installed in piazze is made by Piero Melograni, ‘The Cult

of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4, 11 (1976), p. 231 and in Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 86.

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Fig. 2.2 A postcard of Mussolini cut out and decontextualised from a Luce photograph taken in piazza Venezia, Rome on 28 April 1935 during Celebrazione per la Festa del lavoro

Mussolini’s simple rhetorical questions and dramatic gestures combined with a stilted delivery seemed to allow the cameramen to take good shots.41 The Duce as ‘orator’ can be seen in selected postcards

41 Gabriele D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 107 and mentioned also by Falasca-Zamponi “his face (Mussolini) was a spectacle in itself, appropriately coordinated with Mussolini’s oratorical tone and body movements” in Fascist Spectacle, p. 86.

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featuring him talking on horseback, among officials, and on a platform illustrate the phenomenon of portraits where his expressions were synchronised with the accompanying texts on the back of the postcard or underneath his image, creating an audio-visual effect.42 Together these considerations show that photographs of Mussolini need to be viewed in relation to the variety of ways the dictator’s presence was communicated through the media current at the time, where the aural and gestural charisma of the Duce was translated into a non-verbal language. Gender A further issue bearing on the image of the Duce is the gendered nature of the relationship between the Duce and the masses, which, influenced by theories from anthropologist Le Bon onwards, were considered as feminine with the negative characteristics attributed to women applied to crowds, seen as impulsive, unstable, fanatic, fearful and cruel.43 The Duce functioned as the single dominant male figurehead imposing his will on the hysterical and adoring crowd, who looked at him for guidance. Mussolini has also been described as using traits conventionally considered feminine, playing with the crowd seductively, enticing then withdrawing, leaving the masses with a constant sense of expectancy. The gendering of elements behind concepts such as ‘metallised man’ and ‘metallisation’ was of crucial importance to Fascism,44 as was the hyperphallic and hyperchaste portrayal of the Duce’s person,45 expressed in the language of a modernist cult, with Mussolini’s body taking the form of a ‘missile, an axe, a man of the crowd, a hero with a thousand faces, a

42 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, pp. 174–175. 43 Passerini, Mussolini immaginario. The author discusses the same concept in

‘Costruzione del femminile e del maschile dicotomia sociale e androginia simbolica’, in A. Del Boca, M. Legnani, M.G. Rossi, Il regime fascista (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995), p. 504. 44 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ‘18 BL: Fascist Mass Spectacle’, Representations, 43 (1993), 89–125. 45 The metaphor of ‘metallisation’ central to Marinetti’s writings is cited in the epilogue to Walter Benjamin’s, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: ‘War is Beautiful Because It Initiates the Dream of Metalisation of the Human Body’, Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt, trans. by Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), p. 241, in Schnapp, ‘18 BL’, p. 124.

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helmet, a mask, a head with a 360-degree gaze’.46 The ideal of metallisation associated with the Duce, the Fascist leader ‘metallic’ and ‘immune to the natural law of degeneration’47 expressed virility and added to the mystique of exceptional personality attributed to the Duce, and the belief in the coming of the capo. In Italy, the search for a new leader, or more likely ‘superman’, was interpreted within the logic of a search for a moral force which would have extirpated the corruption of the politics of the past. The exceptional personality recognised in Mussolini would act as a remedy for the ‘evils of democracy’.48 The symbolic aura conferred upon Mussolini captivated the attention of a wider audience in the press, and a large quantity of photographs filled the periodical press and became a staple of the postcard market, portraying Mussolini as a ‘strong man’ who was compared to Garibaldi or Caesar, and whose chin was famous for its ‘squareness and force’.49 The Swiss newspaper S. Galler Tageblatt declared in 1922 that Mussolini’s characteristics were ‘an extraordinary temperament, an exceptional organisational strength and a marvellous ability to dominate’.50 The issue of gender bears on the way the body of Mussolini was fabricated photographically. It opens up a whole field of study surrounding visuality, how vision is constructed, and the scopic regime. Both terms, visuality and scopic regime, refer to the ways in which what is seen and how it is seen are culturally codified. In the case of Mussolini’s images, looking at and wanting to be seen suggest close reading, in particular when photographs of the Duce show parts of his body unclothed. The photograph discussed in this book (see Fig. 11.14) that perhaps best embodies the superhuman attributes of Mussolini is a portrait of him bare-chested on the snowy slopes of Terminillo near Rome, and was part of a series from early 1937. Selected images from the series were published in the press. The Duce as skier reaffirmed Mussolini’s virility, eternal youth and qualities ‘above human limits’.51

46 Ibid., p. 117. 47 Cinzia Sartini Blum, ‘Fascist Temples and Theaters of the Masses’, South Central

Review, 3–4, 14 (1997), 45–58, (p. 55). 48 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 44. 49 Ibid., p. 51. 50 Ibid., p. 51. 51 Ibid., p. 73.

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International Influences When considering photographic representations of the Duce, focus on foreign cultural influence emphasises the intense experimental work of various practitioners from differing professions who used photography,52 such as architects, designers, publicity designers and painters, all of whom, brought to the photographic trade a new artistic awareness. In the 1930s, the rigour of modernist rationalism associated with Bauhaus Modernism was confronted and sometimes merged with an ironic eclecticism typical of what later would be called the postmodern. The result was the production of photographs that ranged from ‘magic realism to artistic photography’.53 In contrast to the stereotypical image of an autarchic and provincial society, the cultural world during the Thirties in Italy was also lively, creative and to a degree, innovative. The intense experimentation of the 1930s points out how new movements in art, that had developed in Europe in the first part of the nineteenth century, had actively influenced various aspects of society, photography included.54 The reference figure for these new developments within photography was the Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. His ideas about spatial concepts and photographic technique exalted technology as a tool for the improvement of human vision. In line with Moholy-Nagy’s theories which arrived in Italy through the circulation of various cultural publications, a type of photography emerged that was more than purely a reproductive technique. The aim was to free Italian photography from a conventional and pictorial approach. This new direction aimed at creating ‘dynamic’ products where images were impersonal and as free as possible from the particular traits of their authors. Foreign canons influenced the initial model followed by the Luce photographers when portraying the Duce. In stylistic terms, Fascist photography showed its debt to Russia, more specifically Russian experimentalism in photographs with the use of oblique composition, side lit and shot from below, framed like Rodchenko. It is suggested that Lenin

52 Annitrenta. Arte e Cultura in Italia (Milan: Mazzotta, 1982). 53 Francesca Alinovi, ‘La fotografia in Italia negli Anni Trenta’, in Annitrenta. Arte e

Cultura in Italia, 2nd edn (Milan: Mazzotta, 1983), p. 409. 54 Ibid., pp. 409–434.

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was the leader who first realised how powerful the impact of photography could be for propaganda purposes.55 As such, he may have had an influence on Fascist propaganda, even though Fascism was not a political movement based on persuasion but rather on the appeal to instinct, and the cult of the Duce was the trigger of that appeal.56 Furthermore, once the Fascist aesthetic was established, the evident influence of Leni Riefenstahl, and her celebration of the athletic body en plein-air, was clear.57 On stylistic issues and through the influence of Riefenstahl, the development continued in Italy in another vein. Where Riefenstahl exalted the physical form, Italian Fascist photography underlined the physical performance.58 Felix Mann, the legendary German photographer and one of the pioneers of photojournalism, who in 1931 was commissioned to spend the whole day photographing Mussolini, set the trend. The model was that of ‘a brilliant, sporty, elegant, super active leader set by Roosevelt.’59 The images of the first appearances of Mussolini were influenced by American photojournalism, relaxed and spontaneous as if they were taken casually and based on the images portraying the American president.60 This was a style that proved to be only a short parenthesis though, for, in 1932 the emerging iconography was already ‘Caesarean’ with the head of Mussolini taken in isolation that would dominate future imagery and become the object of ‘collective possession’.61 Rather than ‘high’ art, Mussolini’s portraits were influenced by ‘kitsch’ and the artistic production of nineteenth-century ex-voto. The debate dominating the second half of the 1920s, about whether Fascist ‘true’ art was either futuristic or ‘novecentista’, resulted in stylistic solutions that responded to the practical need of propaganda, and 55 D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione. L’Istituto Luce’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 102. 56 Ibid., p. 102. 57 Ibid., p. 175. 58 Ellena, ‘Rifare gli italiani’, in L’Italia del Novecento, pp. 202–277. 59 Carlo Bertelli and Giulio Bollati, Storia d’Italia. Annali 2. L’immagine fotografica

1845–1945, 2 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), p. 178. 60 The theory that sees Roosevelt as a model for Mussolini is rejected by Bosworth who believes that the former was in fact quite the opposite: ‘Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Roosevelt, Blum and Franco, were […] less expansive than the Duce they timidly kept their bodies as private concerns’, in Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 212. 61 Bertelli and Bollati, Storia d’Italia, p. 181.

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were embodied successfully in the paradigm message-symbol-idea via publicity.62 Formally, Mussolini’s portraits were influenced by Futurist stylisation, itself inspired by the international modernist and rational movement. The style and symbolic power of Mussolini’s images have been considered to be derived directly from religious iconography. Celestial comparisons and heavenly invocations were often included in descriptions of the Duce, who was on occasion referred to as ‘social archangel’ and ‘envoy of God’.63 In a book published in 1926, Father Paolo Ardali provided a saintly image of Mussolini, one of the several hagiographic profiles of the Duce published during the regime. Two particular examples show Santa Rita di Cascia on clouds above portraits of Mussolini alone and with the king as a sign of divine benediction (Fig. 2.3).64

The Research Process Photography can be considered a mediator of reality as the photographer is placed between the viewer and the subject, and thus the temptation is to indulge in realism, and consider images as real is particularly evident in photographic portraits of the Duce.65 To avoid the ‘reality effect’ and thus read propaganda images literally, photographs as documents need to be placed in context. This is not always straightforward with photographs of Mussolini, since data is frequently missing or incomplete making the biography of his images difficult to trace. Many photographs are not catalogued, series can be partial, and on occasion photographs are randomly collected together often detached from the context in which they were originally displayed to end up in archives or collections with little documentation about individuals and activities represented. Countless photographs were taken of Mussolini and yet only a few of his photographers are credited. Similarly, there is little trace of the typographers, graphic artists, printers and other operators who were involved and possibly made technical decisions on how Mussolini’s images were presented to the public. However, when data can be found, at least for specific images, more can be revealed about their socio-cultural

62 Ibid., p. 86. 63 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 65. 64 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 193. 65 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 21.

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Fig. 2.3 A postcard published after three attempts on Mussolini’s life in 1926: ‘La Santa dell’Impossibile veglia sul nostro Duce’ (The Saint of the Impossible watches over our Duce) (Archivio Sturani, Rome)

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context and highlighting issues associated with examining photographs of Mussolini provides the reader with an understanding of the approach to images in this book. One of the first tasks when approaching Mussolini’s propaganda images is to question how to look at them and become aware of their polysemic value. There is a need to identify and separate his image as transmitted to us and preserved in our memory as modern viewers, from the one that was experienced by his contemporaries. As the photograph depends ‘on a series of historical, cultural, social and technical contexts’ to understand it as both an object as well as an image,66 the meaning of Mussolini’s photographs was and is subject to continuous transformation according to technical variations in texture, colour or whether we see them in a newspaper, album, on a wall or online and in what social or historical circumstance.67,68 To treat images in a comprehensive way and include textual elements that go beyond the literal reading of photographs and complement them with their trajectory may prompt new ideas or suggest further questions about process and efficacy. The current state of Italian archives raises a few issues. According to experts,69 in support of images the photographic archive should also hold 66 Graham Clarke, The photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 19. 67 On how to interpret visual materials see in particular, the works by John Berger

(1977), Peter Burke (1992). 68 Graham Clarke (1997), Hal Foster (1988), Colin Jacobson (2002), Ludmilla Jordanova (2000), Gillian Rose (2007), Claudia Schmölders (2005), Stephen Shore (2007), David Levi Strauss (2005), John Taylor (1998) and Penny Tinkler (2013) all specifically concentrate on vision and visuality in context. Quoting Victor Burgin, Clarke suggests that the ‘photographic discourse’ which can be read like text in the image is the ‘site of a complex intertextuality, an overlapping series of previous texts taken for granted at a particular cultural and historical conjuncture’. Clarke continues by saying that the photograph depends ‘on a series of historical, cultural, social and technical contexts’ to understand it as both an object as well as an image. The meaning of images is subject to continuous transformation according to technical variations in texture, colour or site, whether we see it in a newspaper, in an album or on a wall, and also in what social or historical circumstance (Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 27. 69 The historian Angela Madesani interviewed Laura Gasparini, the curator of the

Fototeca Biblioteca Panizzi in Reggio Emilia, about issues relative to the situation in Italy of photographic archives and cataloguing systems. Gasparini defined the photographic archive as an ‘organic collection of documents’, a ‘place of collective memory’, and a ‘metaphor for the medieval workshop’, in ‘Intervista a Laura Gasparini’ in Angela Madesani, Storia della fotografia (Milan: Mondadori, 2005), pp. 351–361.

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various documents such as notes, letters, essays or contextual information that, if separated from the photograph, would deprive it of fundamental references. Thus the systematisation of both photographic and support material requires a synergic effort with specific skills being developed by various operators and experts, an approach that in Italy has only recently started. Delay regarding the creation of dedicated spaces for photography forces experts to work only on portions of history. Cataloguing, sharing and publishing photographic material through new technology is becoming increasingly important for the study and conservation of photography as an agent of history.70 Although enhancement and optimisation of twentieth-century archives are a difficult challenge,71 Italian archivists, who are used to working with a thousand-year heritage on paper, have had to engage with the products of new technology such as photographic plates, film, magnetic tape, technical drawings, digital reproductions and so on, which require specific training, structure and environments to avoid deterioration or loss. As well as visual methodologies, the conceptual space of the photographic archive has evolved too.72 Influenced by postmodernism and seminal works on photography,73 the traditional concept of the archive, archeologically conceived, has inverted the priority placing context before content.74 The relationship between creator and document will be determined and explained by the use of context as an interpreter before the text itself, where the intention is to form a general interdisciplinary science of the archive,75 with a strong emphasis on flexibility and openness, connections with past and present, inside and outside content. The archivist’s concern today is to determine the point of interpretation placed between the contingency of facts and their contextualisation.

70 Giovanni De Luna, ‘Prefazione all’opera’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. xxxvi. 71 Lucia Salvatori Principe, ‘Premessa’, in Fonti d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia. 72 The ICCD (l’Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) has drawn up a form ‘Scheda F’ to be used when cataloguing photographic material with the intention of compiling data in a universally comparable format, in Chiara Micol Schiona, L’archivio fotografico (Milan: Editrice Bibliografica, 2019), pp. 54–55. 73 Jacques Derrida, Mal d’archive. Une impression freudienne (Paris: Galilée, 1995) trad. it. Mal d’archivio. Un’impressione freudiana (Napoli: Filema, 1996). 74 Laura, Immagine del fascismo, p. 11. 75 Micol Schiona, L’archivio fotografico, p. 18.

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Photographs of Mussolini in archives and collections are stored and presented to the public in different ways. From loosely filed to detailed online presentation where illustrative content is described alongside date and location with technical data and links to other images of the same series.76 Other aspects relative to the biography of the image such as production and distribution as propaganda material are not necessarily stored in the same archive and would be filed as documents in their own right without a link to any particular photographic image.77 The geographical separation between differing collections further complicates the content cross reference or comparison. The growing digitisation means that often images online come with basic details such as place and date, and with a caption that may not be the original. Given the vast quantity of these images, the convenience of consulting them online through search engines with advanced search parameters, text-driven or image-based,78 while an invaluable aid, these sources must be used with caution. Therefore to find photographs of Mussolini is not so problematic; more difficult is to find out about them and understand the meaning or context and circumstances that created his photographs. Contextualising images is one of the many modalities suggested by recent methodological approaches necessary for photographic historical research. Thus considering photographs of Mussolini as agents of history is a developing approach in scholarly works. Visual methodologies identify three sites, productive, compositional and social, as the preferred way in which Mussolini’s visual image had (and still has) cultural and other effects.79

76 LUCE (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa), in effect the visual expression of Mussolini’s government communication, had its origins in a private film company created in 1923 known as the Sindacato di Istruzione Cinematografica, which the government began to subsidise almost immediately. In 1924, the Sindacato was transformed into the Istituto LUCE, and the next year it was made a state agency, in Philip V. Cannistraro, Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (London: Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 313. 77 Gabriele D’Autilia, “Il fascismo senza passione. L’Istituto Luce” in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 92 and p. 103. 78 Image search engine and database are still largely text driven. In the future, however, it is likely image-based search engines will become more commonly available, TinEye, for example, is an online search engine dedicated to searching the Web by image that finds out provenance, use, post-editing process, in Sunil Manghani, Image Studies: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 55. 79 Rose, Visual Methodologies, pp. 257–262.

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The photographs reviewed in this book have been extensively questioned in an attempt to determine the complexity of meaning in a visual image.80 For example, Mussolini’s arrest in 1915 (see Fig. 9.9) is examined to establish who made it and where it was taken. Was it commissioned for someone and what technologies did its production depend on? What was the relation between the maker, the commissioner and the subject? There are further questions about the composition of the image such as what is being shown? What are the components of the image? How are they arranged? Where is the viewer’s eye drawn to in the image and why? What is the vantage point of the photographer, what is the punctum and what relationships are established between the components of the image visually? What is the genre of the image, is it documentary, official or candid?81 Lastly, and perhaps the most difficult to measure, are questions about the audiencing and siting of Mussolini’s photographs. Who was the intended audience? How would his images have been displayed? Where was the spectator positioned in relation to the image and what was the relation between image and viewer? Is more than one interpretation possible? Who are the more recent audiences for his images and what effect does this have on our reading of them? This long and eclectic list of questions illustrates the empirical approach applied when analysing visual material, although it does not necessarily guarantee an answer. Through applying a method the strata composing the visual experience of Mussolini’s photogenic charisma can be separated. The approach followed in the book refers to the photographic representation of Mussolini’s myth through portraits familiar during the regime and favours the concept of reading his photographs as documents. Limiting the site of audiencing to one medium in particular, for example the press, although valid in itself as the principal vehicle of propaganda at the time does not comprehensively address the task of assessing the overall contribution of photography in the construction of the Duce’s cult. Mussolini’s photographs were ‘read’ in newspapers, but also on labels, book covers, school texts, and manuals, as well as on walls of public buildings, on posters, and through gigantic illuminated silhouettes, such as the one projected on the Duomo in Milan. This broader

80 See a list of questions useful as a starting point for studying specific images in Rose, Visual Methodologies, pp. 258–259. 81 A candid photograph is when captured without creating a posed appearance.

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concept of reading photographs could further develop a general method of how to confront diverse and extended audiencing sites. Here analysis was informed by current interpretations of visual culture,82 that consider photographs as sources, ‘like “traces” of the past in the present’.83 Photographs of Mussolini are valuable for understanding the nature of visual representation in the political life of twentieth-century rulers and can show how photography played an integral part in the construction of his cult.84

82 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 260. 83 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 13. 84 Ibid., p. 13.

CHAPTER 3

Images in Politics Before Mussolini

This chapter considers the developments that prepared the ground for Mussolini’s personality cult which formed within the context of this new order where ‘personality’ supported by images appeared in public. From the mid-nineteenth century, the shift of political personalities into the psychological realm was aided by capitalism and secular belief,1 and the resulting ideology of intimacy is a consequence of society replacing saints and religious figures with personalities.2 Personification, namely abstract concepts embodied by an individual, belongs to a tradition dating back to ancient Greek times if not before.3 In the modern era, attempts were made to represent the ideals of the French Revolution, liberty, equality and fraternity in visual language using human forms. Conceptually, twentieth-century Western society was no different as it appropriated religious forms for mundane purposes. The display of a ruler’s image in public was supposed to induce reverence, as artefacts such as paintings, woodcuts or busts had done in the past. The symbolic language of an image needs to be read linked to a given historical situation as when more

1 Alexis Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs: Emotions for the People’, Contemporary European History, 3, 13 (2004), 255–280 (p. 261). 2 Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Penguin, 1978), p. 259. 3 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London:

Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 61.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_3

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general they are less likely to be effective.4 The right emotional signs at the right place and moment could thus affect the reader who was able to understand a visual language constructed according to mutual codes of belief. In Italian society, this type of readership was developed within a world in transformation represented by diverse communities living in cities gradually developing an urban consciousness. Richard Sennett divides the subjects of the public realm into ‘skilled performers’, who expressed themselves actively in public, and ‘spectators’, who did not participate in public life but observed.5 Politicians began to be judged ‘as believable by whether or not they aroused the same belief in their personalities as actors did when on stage’. The silent spectators needed to see in the public personage certain traits of personality, ‘whether he possessed them or not; they invested in him in fantasy what he may lack in reality’.6 Since the 1840s, and thus well before the rise of Mussolini and Fascism in the 1920s, photographs were used to create an emotional link between the powerful and the people, as later images were used to promote complicity between the Fascist hierarchy and Italians during the regime. To investigate the early use of photography by Italian institutions such as the monarchy and government, it is necessary to consider the characteristics and use of images produced for propaganda purposes during the second half of the nineteenth century. This will help establish the conventions that influenced Mussolini’s early photographs, which became the starting point for the development of his photographic image. The analysis focuses on the use of illustrations by the monarchy and the Savoys, the Italian revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) and the Italian poet, soldier and intellectual Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938).

The Savoys Soon after the invention of the medium in the late 1830s royal families realised that photographs were an ideal means of communicating their image to the general public.7 Besides using the press to circulate

4 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1979), p. 17. 5 Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Penguin, 1978), p. 196. 6 Ibid., p. 196. 7 Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs’, p. 256.

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their likeness, royals in Europe also printed photographs as conveniently small, mass-produced postcards and distributed them in numerous copies directly to individuals or in correspondence replying to expressions of loyalty and admiration. While for centuries the representation of European royalty was mainly reproduced in painting, in the twentieth century the use of photographs proved to be even more adaptable to developing historical circumstances. As the power of the monarchy decreased, the role of photography became increasingly important in shifting their relevance as a political force to that of a national symbol. The French Revolution had challenged the union between monarchy and the state in the name of the nation, and over the course of the nineteenth century most European monarchies successfully integrated the concept of the nation into their self-representation. The importance of emotional support became paramount for maintaining the influence of royal families who, to consolidate their positions, considered the ‘representations of royal families as the most important symbols of monarchical nations’.8 Once the technology was available, monarchies took advantage of and extended the limited influence of older forms of mass-produced royal imagery. The production and distribution of these photographs then became an easy and economical way of recording and reproducing lives of the royals from birth, thus creating for those who looked at and sometimes treasured their portraits, a strong sense of identification ‘especially if a royal person was more or less in one’s own age group’.9 The visibility of the royals increased significantly thanks to photographs, with their images successfully diffused and sold all over Europe.10 After the 1840s, when it was technically possible to reproduce photographs directly on printed paper, the press became an essential support for widening the distribution of royal photo-portraits, and people collecting the photographs of royals as they became a regular feature in the illustrated sections in newspapers and magazines.11 The increased diffusion and consumption of royal imagery complemented the people’s desire for a closer emotional connection. Countless thank-you letters

8 Ibid., pp. 262–263. 9 Ibid., p. 263. 10 In Britain, 270,000 copies of the first royal cartes-de-visite were sold in only a few months, Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs’, p. 257. 11 Ibid., p. 257.

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from Prince Umberto’s (1904–1983)12 archive document the emotional bond between the prince and his subjects, helped or even increased by the exchange of these ‘effective and useful public-relations tools’.13 Photographs sent from royal households in correspondence or signed and distributed directly to individuals as personal commemorative gifts gave the illusion of direct royal communication and provoked in ordinary Italians manifestations of religious devotion, sometimes reaching the level of a fetish relationship, with images acquiring the role of cult objects. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, a regular binary system of communication was exchanged between royals and members of the general public who were eager to express their ‘mutual’ interest and Italians who not only consumed royal photographs but also wanted to send their own image to royal families. The photographs people sent were neither seen by the royal addresses,14 nor did these feel they had to return the images, whereas those receiving a royal photo-portrait often replied to describe how ‘overjoyed’ they felt to receive such ‘beautiful’, ‘charming’ and ‘precious’ objects and even went to the extent of describing where they would place it. One documented piece of correspondence recalls an instance when a man who had fought under Garibaldi received a postcard photo-portrait in 1915 of the young Prince Umberto, which he duly hung above his bed kissing it before going to sleep (Fig. 3.1).15 In this context, one of the characteristics of photography is that it seems to offer a guarantee that the photograph carries within it a separate essence of the person represented, and thus the image became an objective correlative that confirmed the viewers’ perception. The signed royal photograph was an ideal way of creating ‘lieux de mémoire’ of meetings with royals.16 These photographs represented the royal personage even though they were physically absent and illustrate the so-called visual mutual emotional engagement and exchange between the powerful and the people.17 Royal charisma was positively affected by mass-produced

12 Umberto was the only son among the five children of King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena. 13 Schwarzenbach, p.260. 14 Ibid., p.265. 15 Ibid., p. 260. 16 Ibid., p. 264. 17 Ibid., p. 265.

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Fig. 3.1 Postcard of Umberto di Savoia, Crown Prince of Italy

images18 and through the effective use of technology the propaganda potential was quickly recognised. The recording of royalty participating in scenes of everyday life represented an absolute novelty in the history of monarchical self-representation. This new way of capturing through the camera lens intimate instants of individuals and families, whose lives had 18 Christopher Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power (London: Penguin, 2009), p. 251.

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always been mysterious, made the royals instantly accessible and provided occasions for mass emotional identification, forging a bond between monarchy and the masses that endures into our time.19

Garibaldi A significant example of visual representation of charisma through images, and a process of political and cultural modernisation, is that surrounding Giuseppe Garibaldi. The Italian revolutionary, leader and popular hero, was one of the first personalities to reach a large audience via the new technologies of mass communication, becoming one of the best-known global figures of the nineteenth century.20 The use of illustrations in Garibaldi’s personality cult can be seen as a precursor to that of Mussolini and helps set the context for the analysis of his photographs. This studied form of self-promotion lasted well after Garibaldi’s death, playing an important part in turning him, and later others, into political celebrities.21 Garibaldi’s image acquired the status of a sacred symbol in a civic religion exploited by interested parties to engender a common sense of rising national and political belonging. His image also became marketable as popular culture via the proliferation of patriotic pamphlets and other ephemera such as calendars, flyers, postcards (Fig. 3.2).22 Garibaldi’s name became a ‘brand’ in its own right and not only enabled journalists, writers and publishers to capitalise on it for economic gain, but also served on a more popular level with the people collecting his image reproduced on postcards and carte-de-visite. Garibaldi’s relatively humble origins were greatly exaggerated via the new technologies of mass communication. Through the production of countless images, Garibaldi ‘became one of the most popular and enduring political heroes

19 Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm, p. 253. 20 Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007),

p. 3. 21 Ibid., p. 13. 22 Ibid., p. 5.

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Fig. 3.2 Giuseppe Garibaldi, carte-de-visite, late 1860s

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of the nineteenth-century world’.23 From the outset of mass communication photography, the concentration on physical traits in visual representations was recognised as an effective branding strategy. The revolutionary rebel or ‘romantic’ hero, which was a visual component of Garibaldi’s propaganda campaign where certain personal characteristics were emphasised, was already familiar by the end of the nineteenth century. The leader who had to personify revolutionary ideals is a concept that dates from the Napoleonic period and marked a change in revolutionary symbolism where abstract virtues became linked to a person and used to glorify personal power and enhance self-legitimation.24 Garibaldi’s short and emotionally-charged oratory fired people with enthusiasm but it was the exploitation of his physical appearance and behaviour that came to play a key role in his political appeal.25 Social and technological developments favoured the extensive circulation of images which, as evident in the propaganda campaign for Garibaldi, were seen to have an evocative power, sometimes to the extent of provoking ‘mass demonstrations of popular enthusiasm’.26 Amply documented, his visit to London in the spring of 1864, only a few years after his crucial military contribution to unify Italy, was a triumph and a successful manifestation of personality cult. Welcomed by half a million people, his visit to London left a vivid memory and impression also thanks to the abundant coverage in books and in the press with drawings, sketches, printed images and carte-de-visite. Simply put, his resonance came down to place and timing as it coincided with political modernisation developed through the popular revolution in publishing, reading and ultimately various forms of visual entertainments where images played a crucial part.

D’Annunzio Most authors agree the writer and aesthete Gabriele D’Annunzio was an exemplary model for Mussolini mainly in political terms,27 and whether

23 Ibid., p. 3. 24 Ibid., p. 62. 25 Ibid., p. 85. 26 Ibid., p. 390. 27 Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 17.

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their concern is with politics or aesthetics,28 credit him with significant influence on the construction of Fascist symbolism.29 Connections are suggested between D’Annunzio and Mussolini about their theatricality and first-person involvement in the managing of their public persona. A stylistic similarity between D’Annunzio and two prominent actresses, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, has been suggested.30 Their innovative acting style, expressed through ‘electrifying’ rhetoric, exaggerated facial expressions and a characteristic use of the body with calibrated voice to seduce the crowd were seen as unconventional and even transgressive.31 The gestural expressiveness invented by Duse, through D’Annunzio was transposed into politics. He, the artist and script writer, once engaged in politics adopted mannerisms and forms of self-representation informed by the world of theatre. The theatrical techniques of seductive spectacularisation and theatricality of the body, look and diction, typical of the ‘diva’, were adapted by D’Annunzio for use in the political sphere. D’Annunzio-divo is thus considered a precursor of Mussolini as actor and stage manager. Mussolini may have drawn on D’Annunzio’s form of communication and image management which he then revisited and personalised to be more populist and demagogic.32 The theatricality associated with D’Annunzio and Mussolini’s political style should be considered as ‘decadent-modernist’ in that the aesthete would fuse art with life, extending style into his oeuvre, appearance and body language, which together were seen as a package that aimed to ‘publicise and sell

28 Stephen Gundle interestingly considers various inspirational sources and in particular from the historical avant-garde, the Futurist Filippo Maria Marinetti and from the star culture, Maciste, the Herculean strongman played by Bartolomeo Pagano, as being influential figures no less important as Mussolini’s precursors, in particular for their communication style, in Stephen Gundle, Christopher Duggan, and Giuliana Pieri, eds., The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians, (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 75. 29 Michael Ledeen, D’Annunzio The First Duce (New Brunswick USA: Transaction, 2002), p. 9. 30 Lucia Re, ‘D’Annunzio, Duse, Wilde, Bernhardt: il rapporto autore/attrice fra decadentismo e modernità’, MLN , 1, 117 (2002), 115–152. 31 Ibid., p. 116. 32 Ibid., p. 124.

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the work’.33 Strategic branding of Mussolini,34 as an ideological commercial figure, can thus be considered directly informed by the theatricality employed by D’Annunzio as a politician. The modus operandi for self-promotion was adopted by D’Annunzio from the beginning as an intellectual and author and for which he would use ‘any means available to him’.35 He managed to attract the attention of the press, increase his visibility and commercial success reaching national status.36 Before the advent of media visibility, D’Annunzio created a distinctive language through rhetorical vividness, emotionally charged and imagery provoking, which was soon transformed into an aesthetic model followed by the younger generation. Characteristically, D’Annunzio’s photographic and published representation merged images of his personal life and private space with those from his artistic and political activity generating a public scrutiny of his life which D’Annunzio actively encouraged.37 His desire to be heard and his constant protagonism were translated into a predominantly egocentric literature of action where the boundaries between myth and reality blurred, an approach also reflected in the poet’s image management. D’Annunzio exploited the mythical status of Garibaldi as the ‘soldier hero’ in particular for the nationalist cause, recasting Garibaldi as a futurist hero and an ‘Omnipotent Leader [Duce]’.38 This propaganda strategy is exemplified in a postcard (Fig. 3.3a) with D’Annunzio represented on a medallion superimposed in profile as if a celestial presence looking down from the sky over the celebrations for the inauguration of the monument to Garibaldi on 5 May 1915 in Genoa. The event, which took place less than twenty days before Italy entered the war, recorded the departure of Garibaldi with his thousand red shirts. D’Annunzio’s speech, published 33 Ibid., p. 123. 34 The term ‘branding’ refers to Steven Heller’s work illustrating how the twentieth-

century totalitarian regimes, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Communist China, used new branding strategies to sell their political messages, see Steven Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State (London: Phaidon, 2008). 35 Giuliana Pieri, ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio and the Self-Fashioning of a National Icon’, Modern Italy, 21, 4 (2016), 330–343, (330). 36 Ibid., p. 330. 37 Ibid., p. 332. 38 John Woodhouse, Gabriele D’Annunzio. Defiant archangel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 196.

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Fig. 3.3 Postcard of Gabriele D’Annunzio at Quarto (Genoa) on the inauguration of Garibaldi Monument on 5 May 1915 with a propaganda postcard of a younger Mussolini from 1912 and the March on Rome 1922 and sent on 28.10.1928

widely in the national press,39 was an example of political propaganda emphasising the inevitability of Italy’s intervention in the ensuing war. It is interesting to note how the style of the time was used by Fascist propaganda some years later as seen in (Fig. 3.3a–b). D’Annunzio’s ability to construct his mythical persona through the ‘rhetoric of exceptionality’40 is represented by an image published worldwide of him in the front seat of a war plane in 1918 (Fig. 3.4a).41 What is interesting about this photograph in relation to Mussolini is the intellectual’s active role in the construction of his own iconic representation and the new positions of artists, writers and intellectuals in a world in transition where the publishing industry made an important contribution influencing public opinion, raising individuals to celebrities and manipulating content where necessary.42 D’Annunzio’s ability to inhabit

39 Il Secolo XIX , 6 May 1915. 40 Pieri, ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’, p. 337. 41 During the First World War on the eve of the flight over Vienna on 9 August 1918

(Fig. 3.4a), photographed by Attilio Prevost Sr. (Turin, 1890—Milan, 1954), D’Annunzio, who could not fly (in this instance he flew as passenger ‘holding a box with a million leaflets’) is depicted on the front seat of the S.V.A. biplane with pilot Natale Palli on the back seat. Published worldwide the photograph also appeared in the Times on 12 August accompanied by propaganda with eulogistic tones, in which the poet was celebrated as the skilful aviator who, although ‘well passed his fiftieth year’ […], major Gabriele D’Annunzio led a flight of eight Italian airplanes behind the Austrian lines […]. 42 Pieri, ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’, p. 330.

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Fig. 3.4 Left, 1918 flight over Vienna: Gabriele D’Annunzio and pilot Natale Palli (Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani - Archivio Iconografico); Right, Mussolini as pilot in a press photograph from 1937

different personae, and, according to circumstances, perform the role of intellectual, soldier or political leader, together with a keen understanding of the power of the image, allow us to understand more about the social and cultural background in which Mussolini’s personality cult flourished. The polysemic symbolic value attached to flying and the figure of the aviator occupied a relevant role in the twentieth-century collective imagery. D’Annunzio-aviator was presented to an audience informed by the bellicose aspirations of the Futurist movement, founded in Milan by Tommaso Marinetti whose idea was of war as an exalting and purifying experience.43 As both flying and pilot could symbolically represent the Fascist synthesis between modernity and myth, images of airplanes were numerous in the 1930s and became part of the established repertoire of the Duce’s iconography (Fig. 3.4b). Building on D’Annunzio’s legacy, Mussolini borrowed part of the respectability of the acclaimed man of letters to convince the Italian educated upper-middle class of his message.44 43 Selena Daly, ‘The Futurist Mountains’: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Experiences of Mountain Combat in the First World War’, Modern Italy, 18, 4 (2013), 323–338 (pp. 323–325). 44 John Woodhouse, Gabriele D’Annunzio. Arcangelo ribelle (Rome: Carocci, 1998), pp. 352–353.

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b

Fig. 3.5 Left, Gabriele D’Annunzio photographed by Mario de Maria, Venice circa 1918–1919 (Fondazione di Venezia); Right, Mussolini by Carell in 1933, resembles the portrait on the left, although it does not necessarily derive from it; both images probably rely on the typology of the thinker or the intellectual (Fototeca Gilardi)

Photographed most probably in 1918–1919 by Mario de Maria,45 D’Annunzio’s posture (Fig. 3.5a) is that of the thinker and sophisticated aesthete. This portrait is linked to another taken at the same time after D’Annunzio had damaged his eye during a flying accident. Of the two known photographs, this is the most relevant as it may have influenced Mussolini’s posture years later when photographed by Ghitta Carell in 1933 (Fig. 3.5b).

45 Library and Archive Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani and Annamaria Andreoli, Album D’Annunzio (Milan: Mondadori, 1990), p. 341. The painter, architect and photographer Mario de Maria (Bologna, 1852–1924) was also known as Marius Pictor.

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D’Annunzio’s nonconformist behaviour and radical approach to politics assured him a place in the public eye.46 Fusing the sacred with the secular, he prepared the ground for a shift in the political landscape where the public became spectator to a kind of political passion play through the elaboration of symbols and rituals,47 creating a new ‘political theology’ considered to have influenced the construction of Fascist symbolism.48

Performance and Politics As well as market expansion, typographical developments also enabled images to be rapidly engraved and appear in the ‘late’ news giving a sense of immediacy, and, although the audience was predominantly middle class, differentiation of the reading market meant that images could now reach a greater and more diverse public affected by the new popularisation of entertainment. The nineteenth-century European public, especially in major cities like London and Paris, had become more receptive to the performance of politics since people developed a new taste for popular genres, such as historical dramas performed in theatres and made more attractive songs and dances. Parisian theatre, as Stephen Gundle notes, ‘acquired an image of daring and pleasure that fitted bourgeois ideology’.49 This growing popular entertainment encouraged an awareness of the national past by reworking it for the popular market.50 Technologically more impressive, popular entertainment altered the structure and presentation of relations in the public sphere which in turn conditioned politics to become ‘democratised’. Politics borrowed from popular theatre with an attention to choreography where the element of entertaining and impress the public was 46 ‘Shocked and dazzled early twentieth-century Europe with his sexual exploits, his military feats, and political escapades’, in J. Woodhouse, Gabriele D’Annunzio: Arcangelo ribelle, p. 21 and inside front cover. 47 Woodhouse, Gabriele D’Annunzio: Arcangelo ribelle, slip cover; see also Michael Ledeen on the use of religious symbols through which D’Annunzio would have been able to ‘convince his allies that they were participants in a holy enterprise’ in Michael Ledeen, D’Annunzio The First Duce (New Brunswick USA: Transaction, 2002), pp. 9–10. 48 Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 17. 49 Stephen Gundle, ‘Mapping the Origins of Glamour: Giovanni Boldini, Paris and the Belle Époque’, Journal of European Studies, 3, 29 (1999), 269–295 (p. 274). 50 Riall, Garibaldi, p. 134.

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seen as important as content,51 a trend resulting from the dramatic social and economic developments taking place during the second half of the nineteenth-century western capitalistic world. The relationship between consumption and the evolution of taste was intensified with the advent of capitalist production in Italy. In Italy, the growing public interest in political information, made more eye-catching through photography, promoted a cult of political celebrity and images of leaders were used to ‘induce feelings of intimacy and indeed “voyeurism” in the public’.52 The unique mass political style developed paved the way for a new representation of politics in the following century. The ‘civic religion’ was established with the purpose of educating Italians politically and had the ambition of freeing them from their traditional loyalty to the Catholic Church and ancien régime.53 The leader’s physical embodiment of values and truths, as represented through the image of Garibaldi, preceding First World War was an image with which Italians could identify and emulate and thus the image of leader became interiorised as part of the collective imaginary. Many in the next generation, comprised also of Mussolini’s Fascists, were thus visually prepared and receptive to this type of propaganda. Analysing the use of photography of the powerful has showed that prior to Mussolini photographs were employed to engage and create an emotional bond with people and gain support to pursue a political agenda. Shortly after the medium was invented and made available for publication in the press, royals started to commission official photographic portraits to represent their likeness for the general public and from as early as 1848 their images became a regular feature of illustrated sections of newspapers or magazines. Technological improvements made photography and its by-products, such as cartes-de-visite and postcards, cheaper and easily mass-produced. As early as after the fall of French monarchy in 1870, older forms of representation such as paintings were complemented by photographs being employed all over Europe as efficient tools of propaganda, not only by royal households but also powerful personages aiming to manipulate and gather support. Garibaldi became a celebrity, was feted by journalists and led a revolution which in under six

51 Ibid., p. 135. 52 Ibid., p. 135. 53 Ibid., pp. 4–6.

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months saw the creation of the Italian nation state. Later, D’Annunzio can be considered as a precursor of ‘strategic branding’ from the pre-mass cultural landscape.54 This was the period that saw the rise of the press mass circulation, the birth of modern advertising, the development and expansion of cinema and the invention of radio,55 which together changed the forms of engagement with the masses. Since Napoleon III photography was used as a propaganda tool and by the time Mussolini became visible to the general public, photography had not only become a recognised profession but even a pastime.56

54 The term ‘branding’ refers to Steven Heller’s work illustrating how the twentieth-

century totalitarian regimes, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and Communist China, used new branding strategies to sell their political messages, see Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State (London: Phaidon, 2008). 55 Stephen Gundle, ‘Mass Culture and the Cult of Personality’, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 73. 56 see Riall, Garibaldi, on the cult of political celebrity, pp. 59–64.

PART II

Production

CHAPTER 4

The Image Makers of the Duce

This part will look at institutions and individuals involved in producing, reproducing, approving and rejecting photographs of the Duce. Staged, constructed and strictly regulated, the visualisation of the Duce’s authority was made possible through a system of control that encouraged self-regulation and self-censorship. His representation relied on exchange between a network of agencies, professionals and functionaries that were not necessarily coordinated with one another,1 but nevertheless were elements in a pyramidal model of power with the leader as the summit. Photographers active as individuals during the regime were either anonymous or left little trace of their activity, and some of their archives have been fragmented or dispersed. Those who lived into more recent times on occasion left negatives and prints but limited evidence for systematic investigation.2 Fascist photographic production and circulation have been studied principally via the activity of the Istituto Luce 1 David Forgacs, ‘How Exceptional were Culture-State Relations in Twentieth-Century Italy?’, in Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy, ed. by Guido Bonsaver and Robert S.C. Gordon (London: Legenda, 2005), pp. 9−20 (p. 11). 2 The studio photographer Ghitta Carell sold her archive to the company 3 M at the end of the Sixties. A selection of plates was made to document subjects of political and social importance from the regime and later. Of the fifty thousand plates left by Carell (taken between 1927 and 1968, sold for two million lire of the time and equal to current eighty thousand euros) we only know that 2400 glass negatives were copied onto 35 mm film. The remaining circa 47,600 plates have been lost, in Roberto Dulio, Un ritratto mondano. Fotografie di Ghitta Carell (Monza: Johan & Levi, 2013), p. 74.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_4

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propaganda campaign during the war.3 When individual photographers are mentioned, it is mostly in conventional and anecdotal narrative. Occasionally the use of unpublished iconographic material provokes an interest in the wider public.4 To trace where and how photographers worked requires complex reconstruction which can only be partial for the numerous missing pieces. As a category, Mussolini’s photographers have been largely ignored, partly due to scarce information or perhaps as they were considered mere technicians simply following Mussolini’s instructions and not worthy of record. Before dwelling on different types of photographers and mechanisms of the regime photographic production, it is worth reflecting on issues concerning the value attributed to photographs and the relations between il Duce and his image makers.

On the Problem of Assigning Agency The extensive exposure of Mussolini’s image assigns to photography, in particular, the power to fix an idea in the collective imagination of the multiple physical and moral qualities attributed to the dictator. Yet factors such as quantity, pervasiveness and ubiquity of Mussolini’s images raise questions concerning the relation between mass-produced photographs and the effect of images in mass culture. The ‘surplus value of images’ is an expression concerned with their under or over estimation and is a question central to contemporary 3 See, for example, Stefano Mannucci, Luce sulla guerra. La fotografia di guerra tra propaganda e realtà. Italia 1940−1945 (Rome: Nuova Arnica, 2007); Adolfo Mignemi, ‘Le immagini di guerra’, in Lo sguardo el’immagine. La fotografia come documento storico, ed. by Adolfo Mignemi (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), pp. 110−133; Adolfo Mignemi, Storia fotografica della Resistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996); Adolfo Mignemi, Storia fotografica della Repubblica sociale italiana (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998); Adolfo Mignemi, Storia fotografica della prigionia dei militari italiani in Germania (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2005). 4 About Adolfo Porry Pastorel, see Tita di Domenicantonio, Adolfo Porry-Pastorel un fotoreporter leggendario, private publication (Palestrina: Circolo Culturale Prenestino Simeoni, 1988), pp. 5−43; Giuliana Scimé, Fotografia della libertà e delle dittature: da Sander a Cartier-Bresson 1922−1946 (Milan: Mazzotta, 1995), p. 204; Sergio Romano, Mussolini (Milan: Longanesi, 2000), pp. 179−180; Vania Colasanti, Scatto matto. La stravagante vita di Adolfo Porry-Pastorel, il padre dei fotoreporter italiani (Venezia: Marsilio, 2013); and Vitullo’s photographic activity together with names of other photographers can be found in the introductory chapter of the illustrated biography of Mussolini by Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), pp. 3−21.

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debate.5 The opposing qualities of distraction (Benjamin) and saturation (Baudrillard) have both been discussed as possible causes of the reduced effect of images, whereas the mass media has been considered as promoting standardisation and homogeneity.6 However, there are authors who consider mass-produced images and their pervasiveness from other perspectives. With reference to Walter Benjamin and his famous essay on the shift from the ‘unique existence’ of the work of art to the depreciation of its aura through mechanical reproduction,7 Peter Burke notes that in the seventeenth century the owner of a woodcut may have treated it with the same respect as an individual image, ‘rather than thinking of it as one copy among many’.8 In the age of photographs, Michael Camille argues, reproduction of an image may actually increase its aura,9 just as repeated photographs add to the glamour of a film star rather than diminishing it.10 Whereas in the age of digital reproduction, Benjamin’s observations on the elimination of the aura of originality have been updated, Douglas Davis maintains that there is no ‘clear conceptual distinction between original and reproduction in virtually any medium based in film, electronics or telecommunications’,11 where the ‘virtual’ realm enhances both ‘originality and traditional truth,12 and where meaning is both deconstructed and simultaneously recreated within a subjective context ‘that is inevitably unique’.13 For a variety of factors, measuring both quantitatively or qualitatively the effects of individual photographs of Mussolini on his contemporaries is fraught with complications and methodologically may not be relevant. 5 W.J.T. Mitchell, What do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 76. 6 Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society (London: Sage, 1988), p. 123. 7 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. by Hanna Arendt, trans. by Harry Zorn (London:

Pimlico, 1999), p. 215. 8 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 17. 9 Michael Camille, ‘“The Très Riches Heures”: An Illuminated Manuscript in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Critical Inquiry, 1, 17 (1990), 72−107 (p. 102). 10 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 19. 11 Douglas Davis, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving

Book: 1991−1995)’, Leonardo, 5, 28 (1995), pp. 381−386 (p. 381). 12 Ibid., p. 381. 13 Ibid., p. 384.

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Personal testimonies, although useful in terms of measuring individual responses, cannot be used as comprehensive evidence to determine the intensity of collective participation in the cult of Mussolini. Only a few of the Fascist instructions to the press, veline as they were called, available to us refer to aesthetic photographic issues concentrating instead on basic practical and technical details, such as photographs being in focus or Mussolini being photographed alone or in a crowd. These veline offer no evidence of protocols or correspondence between key agents of Mussolini’s visual strategy that could suggest the existence of comprehensive written aesthetic instructions through which could be established who exactly decided the pose, lighting, framing, cropping or the use of a photograph in a publication. This type of documentation may have existed during the regime but if so has yet to be found. In the meantime, other methods are considered. For example, one direction could be a study focused on the ‘organisation of looks’ based on a broader concept of reading aimed at decoding the qualitative effects of Mussolini’s images by considering the viewing of these in a particular context.14 Photographs of Mussolini were viewed in a variety of ways, in many different media including books, illustrated magazines, comics, book covers, advertising posters, even product labels, and in general items with a high ratio of image to text.15 The concept of reading his photographs can be extended to include images evoking rather than depicting Mussolini where, although absent, include elements in the picture that recalled his presence. In addition, the social practices which structured the viewing of his images are important.16 The viewing of a picture in a particular context, for example, flicking through a book rather than viewing a framed portrait in a public space, could all lead to different interpretations. The technical aspect such as size, colour and texture of the image can also add a further element to the analysis. A photograph printed in various ways, altered in size, described with a different caption

14 Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage Publications, 2007), p. 22. 15 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 37. 16 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 23.

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or title can affect its emotional impact.17 Again, the audiencing of an image appears ‘important to its meaning’.18 Another point to consider when reflecting on assigning agency to photographs of Mussolini is about the nature of the sources. The criteria for judging the adequacy of historical documentation pose the risk of relying on Fascist propaganda a-critically without placing it in the context of the time as this can lead to a specular reproduction of Fascism’s self-image as a functioning totalitarianism. Analyses based on official statistics, adulatory accounts or anecdotes offer data, such as circulation figures, which are difficult to verify as sources were rarely credited, let alone challenged. This situation provoked a marked contrast between the importance of the subject of research and the lack of resources available. Quantity alone can perhaps indicate the massive orchestration put in place by the regime to stir a nation into devotion of the leader, but it cannot be the only factor in exploring Mussolini’s photographs’ alleged homogenous effects. Differing impressions from some contemporaries of Mussolini’s images have shown that their meanings during the regime could be renegotiated or even rejected. It is according to how quantity, ubiquity or rapid turnover are considered, and what meanings and knowledge are attributed to them, that we can attempt to use these factors as interpretative tools. In the absence of explicit and explanatory written documentation that informs us about a possible visual strategy concerning even those images most widely published during the Fascist regime, we can interrogate photographic evidence and elaborate hypotheses, for example, about repetition and saturation. Mussolini’s photographic presence was pervasive and yet overall did not seem monotonous; it was carefully selected and distributed through a variety of media. His photographs circulated on an almost daily basis form an ideal photographic album where his life events could be monitored by viewers step by step throughout his long political career. Interestingly it is well known that towards the end of the war Mussolini was more reluctant to be represented since the tragic turn of events was evident in his look. Even when manipulated or retouched, his images showed the passage of time, giving the impression of a certain development. In this sense, taken throughout

17 Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 93. 18 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 23.

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the regime, his photographs ‘grew’ with Italian people adding potentially further elements to the collective imaginary. Repetition and saturation could have been counteracted by Mussolini’s renowned chameleonic stage-like behaviour and his photographic projection showed him in a variety of clothes, uniforms, postures and circumstances.19 Mussolini became immediately recognisable, despite, or maybe because of, his multiple projected ‘personas’. The use of different backdrops may also have provided the extra interest required to keep his image engaging. Mussolini’s ‘demotic’ style of rule with his visits to factories when he spoke to ordinary workers, shook their hands, or in ‘walkabouts’ kissing babies, embracing women, or old people, functioned as multiple ‘sets’ rotating around him with a kaleidoscopic effect. The social, therefore, is an important modality for understanding the audiencing of his images.20 Mussolini’s photographs appearing and reappearing creating particular ways of spectating, mediating the visual effects of his images.21 The social modality of audiencing images of Mussolini can be approached by addressing the social identities of those engaged in watching, since different audiences interpret the same visual image in very different ways.22 A systematic study on the social modality should perhaps consider the different social groups, such as the working-class viewers active on the left before the dictatorship and cultured middle-class people, who after the war dismissed Mussolini as vulgar. Other factors could be considered when analysing the audiencing of Mussolini’s images. For example, the gender of his audience, its age, from children to the oldest strata of the population as well as the political affiliations and geographical localities where the viewing of his images were practiced, are all aspects to be further considered. Where the data is available, these considerations are applied when examining the photographs in this book. Produced by a mechanical recording device, photographs could be perceived as an unmediated medium that may provide a direct, uncomplicated authenticity, and straightforward evidence of reality. Furthermore, photography could provide an opportunity for private and subjective 19 For Mussolini’s use of appearance and mannerism as forms of communication, see S. Gundle, ‘Mass Culture and the Cult of Personality’ in The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 72−90. 20 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 23. 21 Ibid., p. 23. 22 Ibid., p. 24.

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viewing of the Duce, to complement the public and collective exhibition of his images. Being reproducible, portable, transferable and collectable, the Duce’s photographs could be looked at as ‘photocopies’ of the Duce’s real self,23 and viewed both collectively and privately. This ambivalent nature of the medium meant it could be used as a vehicle to divulge the essence of Mussolini’s power from a distance and on an intimate level, his influence could appear either grand and authoritative or more ‘human’ and intimate according to different types of production processes and contexts, which people could either look at, handle, keep or treasure his image, or even if not publicly despising it, ignore it as an ‘everyday form of resistance’.24 In general, photographs of Mussolini were reproduced through a selective process carried out in the first instance by ‘his’ photographers. For example, as a quasi-religious icon, the Duce’s image, like Christ or the Virgin, often seen in a frontal pose and looking straight at the viewer, filled a special place in the popular imagery. Either as convinced Fascists or everyday viewers, people were encouraged to treat the subject of the photograph as a real person. Because of the special relationship photography had with reality, people could think that when they looked at photographic images of the Duce they were looking at reality itself. By looking at, or even handling, his photographs, people could assume that what they saw was indeed the man, Mussolini, when actually what they were looking at was not the man but a simulacrum.25 To this extent Mussolini’s image gave the impression of having an autonomous force.26 As the ‘camera-eye doesn’t think’

23 Richard

Howells and Joaquim Negreiros, Visual Culture 2012), pp. 183−202.

(London: Polity,

24 Concepts of microrésistances and microlibertés or, as quoted, ‘forms of resistance’, are exposed in the classic essays of scholars Steven Lukes (1975), Michel de Certeau (1980) and James C. Scott (1985) on popular ideology and struggle by peasants against their oppressors, and are interestingly invoked by Forgacs and Gundle, against the historiographical approach to Fascism’s own self-image as a specular reproduction as a functioning totalitarianism, to stress the importance of ruses of popular non-acquiescence, in David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass culture and Italian society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 200. 25 Richard Howells and Joaquim Negreiros, Visual Culture (London: Polity, 2012), p. 190. 26 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 50.

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but recognises,27 it was photographers who took the first shot which subsequently, during editing, recomposed an image with a familiar visual syntax. In other words, the camera recorded what the photographers decided to frame according to their relation with the political and cultural environment, their personal sensibility and familiarity with the technology available at the time. Since perception is an inconstant variable and not fixed in time, giving meaning to a photograph is subjective and depends on a wide range of factors; it was conditioned by choices made well before the viewer saw Mussolini’s image, that is from prior to the moment of shutter release through to when a specific image was selected during the editorial process, altered and eventually placed in a particular visual and communicative context.28 By addressing the element of agency of the photographer, the intention is not to trivialise the control and censorship of Mussolini’s representation. Photographers during Mussolini’s dictatorship were certainly not ‘free’ to choose when and how to photograph the Duce or work according to personalised stylistic conventions independent of or even against the censorial controls or parameters for what was considered an acceptable photograph as set by the dispositions of Mussolini’s Press Office. Rather the aim here is to add layers to the analysis that can reveal aspects of the propaganda machine. Photographs of Mussolini were produced within a developing image culture, where new styles of photojournalism may have modified the social status of photographs in general, including their political role. The images which reached the public were not only subject to censorship by the authorities but also to selection and impagination by editorial staff. It is necessary to distinguish between what the photographer saw through the viewfinder, implicit at the moment of releasing the shutter and thus incorporated in the image, and the image the public were presented with by the media. Images were also selected and recomposed in relation to the diverse requirements of the final base, such as text and captions in newspapers or book covers, posters, framed portraits and so on. The control of this flow was only partially centralised since the majority corresponded to unconscious or internalised forms of self-censorship, individual taste 27 David Levi Strauss, Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (New York: Aperture, 2005), p. 110. 28 Adolfo Mignemi, ‘Sguardi incrociati. L’Italia in guerra (1943−1945)’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini, ed. by Giovanni De Luna, Gabriele D’Autilia, Luca Criscenti, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), I, p. 312.

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criteria and established conventions of what was acceptable that had been interiorised by photographic and news industry operators.29 An evaluation of the nature and the use of photographic images of Mussolini in the construction of his cult where possible will establish the main elements contributing to the genesis of his images and examine other practical issues concerning circulation. The general tendency is to focus on the role of the dictator as sole creator and choreographer of his own image, with analyses based on prints taken mostly from Istituto Luce and considered often without reference to their original context. This approach appears by now unsatisfactory as it regards political propaganda as an isolated technique and not part of a developing technological society. Propaganda can also be sociological, that is the penetration of ‘an ideology by means of its sociological context’.30 By the early 1930s photographs of Mussolini were appearing next to commercial advertisements in the press (Fig. 4.1). Photography was beginning to dominate advertising to the point that the line between fact and fiction became blurred. An advertisement for the magazine Time in 1936 wrote: In all the world there is no drama like reality…no spectacle so great and stirring as the tremendous, marching pageant of news. In the year to come…great actors like Mussolini and Hitler will march across the stage before you in what may prove their farewell appearance…31

By isolating the figure of the Duce as a former journalist and thus attributing only to him an extraordinary ability to manipulate the media, one takes more or less at face value the idea of the regime as a totalitarian system wholly managed from above.32 It may be worth considering therefore other lines of enquiring such as the sites of production and image

29 Antonio Gibelli, ‘La nazione in armi. Grande Guerra e organizzazione del consenso’, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, I, pp. 39−71 (p. 41). 30 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitude (Toronto: Knopf, 1965), p. 63. 31 The advertisement in Life, 28 December 1936, 73 in Kiku Adatto, Picture Perfect: Life in the Age of the PhotoOp (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 124. 32 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 200.

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Fig. 4.1 La Domenica del Corriere 4 May 1930–Mussolini with family; in the medallion his daughter Edda and her husband Galeazzo Ciano

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management. Shifting the focus of attention towards Mussolini’s photographers, ‘the custodians of his public image’33 offers an opportunity, at an iconological level, to evaluate the importance of arousing emotions as the intended consequence of Mussolini’s image management.34 The making of Mussolini’s photographic representation focuses on who took the photographs, how they were taken, with an analysis of the photographers’ activity to explain how Mussolini’s images were produced, edited and circulated.

His Many Photographers The majority of Mussolini’s official images were taken by photographers who worked for Istituto Luce, the photographic branch of which was created in 1927. Other photographs were taken, especially when he was first appointed, by well-established independent photographers who sometimes even signed their photographs, a practice that gradually disappeared. Finally, official portraits were taken by studio photographers appointed by the Press Office or his private secretary. None of these photographers, government or independent, could casually take a photograph of Mussolini, reproduce or sell it without being previously authorised. It is also possible that unauthorised photographs might have been taken during Mussolini’s life. Individuals with an interest for photography or for the subject in question, perhaps with commercial or political goals, might well have taken shots of the Duce. However, if photographs of this type exist they remain hidden or lost in archives or private homes. To evaluate the existence and extent of photographs of the Duce taken illegally or secretly by private individuals, published or not, could contribute a different perspective to current analyses of impact and perception of the officially approved images and aesthetic values of the regime.35 The following outlines the modus operandi between Mussolini

33 D’Autilia, ‘Introduzione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, I, p. XLII. 34 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 48. 35 Throughout my research and viewing a substantial quantity of the dictator’s images,

I have seen none that could be considered as private, ‘stolen’ snapshot. Collectors or experts believe it is unlikely such photographs would exist (apart from officially censored images) as at the time they consider photography was still the prerogative of a few more wealthy individuals.

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and his photographers, who worked for Luce, or as photojournalist and studio photographers. Unlike Hitler, who was photographed for years by his friend and ‘confidant’ Heinrich Hoffmann,36 Mussolini had no dedicated personal photographer throughout his career, although for some years he had a few favourites.37 Hoffman’s first public picture of Hitler shows him in the Odeonsplatz in Munich in a large crowd gathered on the 2 August 1914 for the reading of the declaration of war.38 After the First World War, and probably due to his desire to remain incognito,39 Hitler was at first reticent before the camera. This was eventually overcome after he chose to work exclusively with Hoffmann who, as a result, enjoyed a significant commercial success.40 By contrast, Mussolini from the beginning of his being in the public eye, seemed to be at ease with the photographic medium and from the First World War, ‘the first mass, modern war’,41 he even demonstrated a strategic use of his image to enhance his standing as an activist and journalist. 36 Fabrice D’Almeida, High Society in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), p. 113. 37 According to Enrico Sturani, Amerigo Petitti was Mussolini’s personal photographer during the first years of his political career before Istituto Luce replaced him in 1928, in Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), p. 34. 38 Hoffmann took his first photograph of Hitler quite unconsciously, when he photographed the large crowd of cheering people, assembled outside the Feldhernhalle in Munich, the news of the outbreak of war. Hitler was in the crowd and only in the 1920s, when Hoffmann was going through his old photographs, did he come across this one, and on Hitler remarking that he was present on that occasion, did Hoffmann search for and find the future Führer’s ecstatic face visible among the many, in John Fraser, ‘Hitler’s Cameraman’, The British Journal of Photography, 39 (1985), 1082–1086. 39 In the early 1920s, there was a warrant for Hitler’s arrest in Prussia and other northern German states where the Nazi Party was outlawed, hence his reticence for the medium, in Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face. The Biography of an Image, trans. Adrian Daub (Munich: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 5. John Fraser though considers Hitler’s reticence was due to a calculated strategy to see who would offer more money for his photographs to boost the Nazi Party funds, see Fraser, ‘Hitler’s Cameraman’, p. 1086. 40 On Heinrich Hoffmann’s commercial success as Hitler’s official photographer, see, Schmölders, Hitler’s Face, p. 43; D’Almeida, High Society, pp. 113, 127, 129, 150, 224; Fraser, ‘Hitler’s Cameraman’, The British Journal of Photography, 40 (1985), 1108–1112 (p. 1111). 41 Gundle, ‘Hollywood, Italy and the First World War: Italian Reactions to Film Versions of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms’, in Culture, Censorship, p. 98.

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A plausible explanation for Mussolini’s decision to be photographed over the span of his career by numerous different photographers, official and private, rather than one exclusively, seems rooted in both the generally accepted view of photographers as technicians rather than visual communicators, and, more importantly, Mussolini’s concern to appear as the principal and unique author of his own image. Although photographers in the early years of the regime were credited for their work, which on occasion they even signed, later they became anonymous with very few exceptions. Anonymity of the image accentuated Mussolini as the subject, and stressed that the potency of his image was the result of mystical qualities. Despite being considered marginal, photographers in reality played an important part in the construction of Mussolini’s photogenic charisma and their activity is the prime testament to the strategic staging of the dictator’s media power. Acting as both unseen directors and promoters of Mussolini’s myth, the photographers worked in close association with the press, responding to market requirements and developing a whole new way of communicating. Although a significant contribution to the cult of the Duce, at least in the technical way, a systematic study of their activity has yet to be made. The anonymity of the photographers and the corresponding lack of data surrounding them make their story a problematic one to tell.42 Part II provides an overview of their work with an emphasis on selected photographers who were representative of the propaganda machine as a whole and are subjected here to critical scrutiny for the first time. It is important to bear in mind that among the many photographers of Mussolini, none worked for him exclusively.43 Whoever took photographs of the Duce could also be working independently, either on assignment or by selling their own work. While some regularly took photographs of Mussolini, and others only occasionally, a few were hired only for special occasions or circumstances. The heterogeneous community of photographers who captured Mussolini through the camera might have differed in their styles and professional backgrounds, but they unavoidably were part

42 Mignemi, Sguardi incrociati, pp. 213–220. 43 Besides Istituto Luce others took photographs of the Duce. In Rome alone: Ghitta

Carell, Gatta, Adolfo Porry Pastorel, Amerigo Petitti, Eugenio Risi, Vasari, Bruni, Eva Barrett, Ernesto Richter, Fontana, Luigi Leoni, Caponnetti, and also Gabinetto Fotografico del Governatorato.

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of the same political and social environment as the practice of photography became more industrialised.44 In 1930s Italy the working practice of a photographer was established according to modern European standards. There was a growing number of differing operators and professions whose activity was directly connected through a growing industry that comprised optical, mechanical and typographical enterprises, but above all the press. With industrialisation and the need to increase sales, commerce relied more and more on publicity, with the production of images and symbols multiplying and giving rise to new ways of communicating. Aided by technological developments, the press enjoyed unprecedented success and, alongside the traditional sober style, a new bolder form of communication was developed to reflect the interests of new consumers and consequently new markets.45 The realism of photographs, with the illusion of immediacy and familiarity that they communicated, assured a decisive emotional investment with a varied and wider public. Alongside this documentary value of Mussolini’s images, was the intention to condition public opinion during the Thirties. Now we need to establish who took the photographs, on whose direction, for what purpose and through which technical and cultural language. The following will examine the photographers of Istituto Luce and the corporate image, then photojournalists and the press image and finally the studio photographer and the aesthetic image. The next three chapters present a more organic image of who Mussolini’s photographers were and how they worked towards the construction of the Duce’s cult.

44 Anna Lisa Carlotti, ed., Fotografia e fotografi a Milano dall’Ottocento ad oggi (Milan: Abitare Segesta Cataloghi, 2000), p. 40. 45 Ibid., p. 54.

CHAPTER 5

The Corporate Image: Istituto Luce

L.U.C.E Any analysis that looks into the practicality of Mussolini’s photographic representation must first consider the most important employer of these photographers, the state-funded film production company L.U.C.E. (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa/The Educational Film Union). Istituto Luce had its origins in a private film company created by the lawyer and journalist Luciano De Feo in 1923, when it was known as the Sindacato di Istruzione Cinematografica (S.I.C.), which the government began to subsidise almost immediately when, in 1924, SIC was transformed into the Istituto Luce. The following year it became a state agency under the direct control of Mussolini and other administrators, among whom was Alessandro Sardi, who eventually fell from favour due to suspect financial management. According to Mino Argentieri, Sardi also failed to reflect the aggressive image that the regime wanted to project.1 In 1933 the Istituto was put under the direction of the career diplomat, and prominent figure in the National Fascist Party (PNF),2 Marchese Giacomo Paulucci di Calboli Barone with the prime aim of reorganising 1 Mino Argentieri, L’occhio del regime (Rome: Bulzoni, 2003), p. 69. 2 In 1923, on Mussolini’s instructions, Paulucci was made member of PNF ad honorem,

in Archivi per la storia, Maria Rosaria Celli Giorgini, ‘La memoria storica dell’Istituto Luce attraverso l’Archivio Paulucci di Calboli’, Rivista dell’associazione nazionale archivistica

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_5

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the practical running of the Institute and restructuring the bookkeeping subsequent to the precarious financial situation it fell into under its previous unsuccessful management.3 According to Ernesto Laura, it was thanks to Paulucci, who was aware of Mussolini’s media ambitions, that the recently appointed prime minister was given the tangible proof of the media impact his image had on people. During a visit to Naples in 1924, Paulucci and Luciano De Feo organised the public showing of a film-documentary, which enjoyed a notable success on the ‘Prime Minister’s office’, in which Mussolini was seen working at his desk.4 From this moment and through the suggestive power of the moving image, Mussolini’s myth, which had been temporarily compromised by the Matteotti crisis, would be restored and shared on a mass scale.5 In the following months, the regime took further decisive measures regarding press freedom, with dissent actively being repressed. The suppression of the opposition press through legislation enacted between July 1924 and November 1926,6 the introduction of the regime’s official news agency, Agenzia Stefani, the promulgation of Law 31 December 1925,7 and the creation of Istituto Luce, which became in effect the visual expression of

italiana, 1–2 (January–December), in Archivi per la storia (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 2004), pp. 371–384 (p. 376). 3 Stefano Mannucci, Luce sulla guerra. La fotografia di guerra tra propaganda e realtà. Italia 1940–1945 (Rome: Nuova Arnica Editrice, 2007), p. 12. It is a well-known fact that the financial crisis inherited by Paulucci was caused by the making of the film Camicia Nera in 1932, produced on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome (28 October 1922). The film not only went over budget (from 4 to 8 million lire) but was not finished on time. 4 The title of the documentary was ‘Dove si lavora per la grandezza d’Italia’, in Ernesto G. Laura, Le stagioni dell’aquila. Storia dell’Istituto Luce (Rome: Istituto Luce, 2004), p. 15. 5 Gabriele D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione. L’Istituto Luce’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini (1900–1945), ed. by De Luna and others, I, (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), pp. 92 and 103. 6 Albertina Vittoria, ‘Fascist Censorship and Non-fascist Literary Circles’, in Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy, ed. by Guido Bonsaver and Robert S.C. Gordon (London: Legenda, 2005), p. 54. 7 On the 14 July 1925: ‘Mussolini sent a letter to the Ministries of Education, National Economy, Colonies, and Home Office instructing them of LUCE’s official capacities and to make use of its technical assistance and films to broadcast films on education and public information, as well as urging for a programme introducing the use of film in primary and secondary schools’, in Archivi per la storia (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 2004), p. 377.

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the head of government’s political and institutional communication, all formed part of a new media landscape.8 This last event marked a decisive development in cinematic production at both national and international level. Italy was the first non-communist country (the very first being Hungary, under Béla Kun and then the USSR under Lenin) to found and fund a state film agency.9 From that moment, Mussolini could and did personally oversee all cinematic material relating to him. Two years later, in 1927, Luce, simultaneously with the introduction of newsreel in all cinemas, set up the Photographic Service as a national photographic archive. This was given responsibility for the production and diffusion of Mussolini’s photographic image.10 On the Duce’s instructions, a bond was created between Luce and the Press Office which had various directors, Cesare Rossi, Giovanni Capasso-Torre, and Lando Ferretti, who was followed by Gaetano Polverelli. Between 1931 and 1933 it became noticeably more powerful under Polverelli’s direction. In 1934 Galeazzo Ciano oversaw a further development when the Office was enlarged to become an Undersecretariat of State for Press and Propaganda. The next year, still under Ciano’s direction, this became the Ministry of Press and Propaganda and ultimately was renamed the Ministry of Popular Culture in 1937. It was during this final phase under the direction of Dino Alfieri that the Ministry controlled many areas of mass culture, notably publishing, theatre and cinema. In 1939 Alfieri was replaced by Alessandro Pavolini, who had begun his political career as a member of the violent ‘Fascist squads from Florence’. Under his direction the

8 D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 92. 9 Laura, Le stagioni dell’aquila, p. 18. 10 To create the Archivio Fotografico Nazionale, Luce gathered photographic material from various sources, such as the Lombardi Siena with images of national works of art, the Ministry of Public Instruction, and private collections like that of Adolfo Porry Pastorel. The intention, at least on paper, was to continue the tradition of a National Catalogue, in reality images were selected with the aim of censoring compromising material; see Mannucci, Luce sulla guerra, p. 13; for other studies of Luce’s activity during the war, see Adolfo Mignemi, ‘Le immagini di guerra’, in Lo sguardo e l’immagine. La fotografia come documento storico, ed. by Adolfo Mignemi (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), pp. 110–133; idem, Storia fotografica della Resistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996); idem, Storia fotografica della Repubblica sociale italiana (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998); idem, Storia fotografica della prigionia dei militari italiani in Germania (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2005).

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Ministry declared its role in relation to war. Finally, in 1943 Polverelli became the last to lead what was familiarly known as the Minculpop.11 That Luce was a vehicle providing information to the masses is evident even in the composition of its directorate, which included bureaucrats, parliamentarians, military representatives and diplomats, but no representatives from the world of culture or the cinema, even though these had a decisive influence on both the content and form of its products. From the outset of the Ventennio, the production and distribution of the Duce’s images reflected the pedagogical function for which Luce was originally set up.12

Luce Style Stylistically ‘plain’ or ‘institutional’, official images of Mussolini were inspired by simplicity, as if photographs could visually translate ‘the modern text book of the teacher-Duce’.13 Due to a mixture of technological impositions and the nineteenth-century practice of faithful reproduction, where the camera still imposed immobility and a fixed expression,14 many Luce images represented Mussolini in the typical style of school photographs. He is at the centre and, although everyone is looking at the camera, the group appears close to the leader as if all were working towards a shared political dream (Fig. 5.1). The photographs mirrored the Duce’s paratactic rhetorical style, deprived of more elaborate syntactical devices and with a simplified composition understandable by most; Luce photographs offered a model of propaganda that employed a subdued register that mainly followed two styles. Interestingly defined

11 On propaganda and censorship during the regime see: Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture (pp. 214–220 and 275–352); D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, I, p. 92; Vittoria, ‘Fascist Censorship’, in Culture, Censorship, ed. by Bonsaver and Gordon, p. 54; Mimmo Franzinelli, ‘Introduzione’, in Mimmo Franzinelli and Emanuele Valerio Marino, Il Duce proibito. Le fotografie di Mussolini che gli Italiani non hanno mai visto (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), p. xv. 12 In 1927 Luce developed 1590 negatives and printed 10,000 copies, in 1935 10,000 negatives and 290,000 copies, and in 1942 25,000 negatives were developed, D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 94. 13 D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 99. 14 Italo Zannier, L’io e il suo doppio. Un secolo di ritratto fotografico in Italia 1895/1995

(Florence: Alinari, 1995), p. 58.

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Fig. 5.1 Mussolini at Palazzo Venezia in a group photograph, 1940

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by Gabriele D’Autilia, as ‘agitator’ and ‘moderate’,15 the first being ‘subversive, galvanic and revolutionary’,16 while the second, was less defiant but more pervasive, Fascist values were transmitted through photographs based on two levels of representation where the Duce was elevated alternatively to both a mythical and familiar icon. In this Luce photograph, published on L’Illustrazione Italiana, 7 April 1940, Mussolini is surrounded by 16 men of whom at least 10 are in black shirt. The majority of Luce photographs representing Mussolini adopted a style that was illustrative and descriptive, while only selected shots were emotionally charged and directly provocative. The ‘demotic’ style of rule, where Mussolini demonstrated accessibility, was expressed throughout the Ventennio with images of him visiting factories, speaking to ordinary workers and shaking their hands, or images of his ‘walkabouts’ during which on occasion he would even kiss babies. The characteristic understatement of that rational Luce aesthetic was functional to a systematic use of images that recorded and documented the many ‘physical’ contacts of the leader rather than triumphantly exalting them. By simplifying the message, the regime was able to reach a larger and diverse audience and through the production, diffusion and repetition of a myriad of images, illustrating almost identical events, Luce photographers contributed to the creation and implementation of a nationally relevant and reassuring pedagogical tool. However, the very nature of Luce material, with its seemingly uniform stylistic quality, poses various questions for the photo-historian. The privileged position of the Istituto ensured that its employees enjoyed generous salaries yet suffered from the typical defects of public institutions. There were few specialised individuals and political pressure was often brought to bear to employ relatives and friends of the gerarchi. Luce’s photographic production was anonymous and therefore the result of a collective

15 The style adopted by Luce to the one of publicity and defines Fascist propaganda double-register as ‘medio’ and ‘agitatorio’, D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 101. 16 Max Kozloff, The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900 (London: Phaidon, 2007), p. 102.

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effort.17 According to Carlo Bertelli, this anonymity ensured that photographers did not need to compete to gain greater visibility, resulting generally in a mediocre expressive quality.18 Luce photographers thus offered, a competent but unremarkable product. The extraordinariness in Luce’s photographs was provided by Mussolini as the subject in his uniforms or when recording his theatrical mimicry. The ordinariness of the Luce style did in fact accentuate the documentary character and veracity of Mussolini’s image, conferring an authoritative air on the Duce, who was portrayed offering his service to the country. Perceiving his images as realistic, Italians were then meant to identify with the Fascist values and style illustrated in Mussolini’s Luce photographs. The documentary directness of American photography, according to Bertelli, was a principal influence for many Luce photographers who, as they did not have to offer their photographs to the newspapers, or compete via the originality of their work, and had their images reviewed and censored in detail, consciously worked towards uniformity.19

Luce Organisation Close study of the actual photographs from the Luce Archive and the National Archives in Rome and Forlì and supported by some volumes specific to the activity of the institute20 enable us today to add further details to previous observations. We now know for example that Mussolini’s Luce photographic production was executed according to a precise routine. In section IV of the Service Regulations suggested and

17 Istituto Luce staff knew the authors of the various images but this was not made public. Photographs printed in the press or public official images of the Duce were not generally signed and thus ‘anonymous’ for viewers. 18 Carlo Bertelli, ‘Ancora il Luce’, in Storia d’Italia. Annali 2, L’immagine fotografica 1845–1945, ed. by Bertelli and Giulio Bollati (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), p. 177. 19 Bertelli, ‘Ancora il Luce’, p. 177. 20 See, in particular, two seminal studies edited by Giovanni De Luna and Gabriele

D’Autilia on the historical reconstruction of the Istituto. The Luce publication, including a volume of an in-depth study of the Institute history by Ernesto Laura, was written with support from Soprintendenza Archivistica and has a close analysis of archive material from the National and Paulucci di Calboli Archives, Rome and Forlì. Luce cataloguing of textbased documents is both extensive and exhaustive, while the inventory for photographs is still underway, see Fonti d’archivio per la storia del LUCE 1925–1945, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004).

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drawn up by the Luce director Paulucci, there are detailed instructions for every eventuality regarding the management and execution of the photographic procedure.21 From this document, one learns that every time photographers covered an event there was a precise procedure to follow that was, at least on paper, meticulously directed and controlled.22 For instance, part of this process was to consign the developed negatives and copies of prints as well as any rejected copies to the Luce photographic department, using a written system of identification to record all the particulars of the images made, such as name of photographer, camera settings and details of the event.23 Once developed and printed, photographs of Mussolini were initially stored loose in boxes or folders. From 1934 they were collected in albums that were reproduced in various copies. The master remained at Luce with the first album being for the exclusive attention of Mussolini, another for his private secretary, then the Press Office and where necessary on request to newspapers subscribing to Luce and other institutions.24 To further establish corporate identity when working for Luce, photographers were also required to wear a uniform with a Luce armband to help identify them. The existence of rigid instructions such as these does not necessarily mean that they were literally followed, and it is possible, as Mino Argentieri suggests, that the image of a modern and efficient company projected by Paulucci did not entirely reflect reality.25 Letters or notes of complaint about Luce’s organisation were not unusual and individuals working within Luce or for it more than once accused the organisation and staff

21 Archivio di Stato Forlì, b. 247: Ist. Naz. Luce, reg. ff. 4–5: Istituto Nazionale Luce. Regolamento dei Servizi. 22 ‘Photographers consign the negatives, print copies, rejects and two copies of the

purchase order to their Manager. Once checked the Manager should send the approved prints and negatives with a copy of the purchase order to the Sales department. The Manager should keep the rejects and provide the photographer with the second copy of the purchase order duly stamped and dated’, in Archivio di Stato Forlì, b. 247: Ist. Naz. Luce, reg. ff. 4–5: Istituto Nazionale Luce. Regolamento dei Servizi, Sezione IVProduzione fotografica, art. 191. 23 Andrea Amatiste, ‘I materiali fotografici: consistenze e tipologie’, in Fonti d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004), p. 91. 24 Dimitri Affri, ‘Archivio centrale dello Stato. Segreteria particolare del Duce’, in Fonti d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004), p. 302. This was confirmed to me during my visit in April 2008 to the archive at Istituto Luce in Rome. 25 Argentieri, L’occhio del regime, p. 104.

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of being slow, inefficient and reflecting more a feudal bureaucracy than a modern and dynamic film studio. In an office memo, the director general of cinema Luigi Freddi accused Luce of ‘permanently cheating the Italian people forcing on them a product without even the minimum necessary technical or creative requirements, […], the only result being an injection of the daily ration of boredom’.26 Freddi was here discussing newsreels but the point can be extended to still photographs. Whether or not this observation reflected the actual organisation of Luce, it is nevertheless necessary to use particular caution when referring to this kind of documentation which may also reflect the personal rivalry within the various organisations linked to Luce.27 Through crossreferencing the original catalogues compiled by Luce and photographic material present today we can demonstrate that a certain formal procedure was effectively in place.28

Luce Abroad Only newspapers that subscribed to Luce were allowed to publish Mussolini’s authorised photographs with instructions from Stefani, the government-controlled press agency. Likewise for photographs that were sent abroad free there was an analogous procedure.29 The practice of not charging the various entities receiving photographs sent abroad was a contentious one among Luce managers, even at a later date. A brief extract of the minutes taken during a meeting between Paulucci and De Feo and other individuals responsible for the running of the film

26 Argentieri, L’occhio del regime, pp. 10 and 120. 27 This observation was told to me by Adolfo Mignemi, who specialises in the interwar

and Italian participation in the Second World War, and has a long experience of researching Luce archive photographs. 28 Patrizia Cacciani, ‘L’Archivio storico dell’Istituto Luce. Inventario’, in Fonti d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004), p. 45. 29 The Royal Decree of 24 January 1927 VII, n. 122 declared Istituto Nazionale LUCE as the sole state photographic agency for recording official events, creating ‘a subscription service for the national press at an affordable rate for those photographs that represent variety and quality for periodicals which they otherwise could not afford to help make newspapers more interesting. Propaganda photographs of interest taken by LUCE exclusive right conferred upon it by Law will be circulated for free’ in Amatiste, ‘I materiali fotografici’, in Fonti d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004), p. 89.

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and photographic activities during the campaign in East Africa indicates that there was tension regarding the organisation of propaganda abroad. During this conversation, Paulucci stated that: ‘in my opinion, the best propaganda is that which you pay for’ followed by De Feo who replied that ‘commercial exploitation in cinema is rapid, while for photography effectively viewing images is not always paid for. Magazines can be seen in any country and it is not possible to regulate successive publications and take responsibility for exclusivity’.30 In the course of the first decade of the regime, international propaganda was predominantly directed at emigrant Italians, through the gradual fascistisation of Italian diplomacy abroad, and via the political nomination of consuls, the so-called ventottisti.31 In 1929 the ‘Department for Italians Abroad’ was created to promote the Fascist doctrine and ideals.32 Those responsible for propaganda abroad were directly answerable to the Duce’s Press Office and subsequently the Ministry of Popular Culture, under the direction of Galeazzo Ciano from 1933 to 1936. Even though the study on Fascist propaganda abroad by Benedetta Garzarelli concentrates almost exclusively on Germany and France, her volume demonstrates the fundamental importance of the distribution of the Duce’s photographic image.33 Ciano increased the finance available for propaganda abroad to develop its efficacy by all possible means, photography, cinema, radio, including university tutors and even artists, but on the condition that the propaganda element would not be obvious, as he was convinced that ‘by now people would prefer to be informed rather than preached to’,34 as propaganda ‘to be effective should not use hyperbole, nor flattery, to avoid creating suspicion that the desire is to cram the brain’.35 Due

30 Archivio di Stato Forlì, b. 247: Ist. Naz. Luce, f. 6: Reparto Cinematografico A.O. 31 This word refers particularly to diplomats appointed for political reasons, and who

represented the decidedly Fascist elements of diplomacy, in Benedetta Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero. La propaganda del fascismo all’estero (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), p. 68. 32 Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia, cit., vol. XXIV (Florence: La Fenice, 1958), pp. 278–285, in Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero, p. 19. 33 Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero (2004). 34 ACS, Mcp, Gab., b. 4, fasc. 15, promemoria, s.d., s.f. in Garzarelli, Parleremo al

mondo intero, p. 31. 35 ACS, Mcp, Dgp, b. 68, fasc. ‘Invio materiale di propaganda in Francia’, letter from Landini, 7 April 1934, in Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero, p. 69.

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to high costs and practical issues, Fascist propaganda through cinema and radio abroad had only a limited diffusion, while the printed word and photographs were the preferred instruments. Translated publications illustrated with photographs and brief captions were sent to diplomats and the foreign press. As a result of their research both Garzarelli and Pasquale Chessa observe that, contrary to what may be expected, Luce photographs of Mussolini are not predominant in archives abroad.36 The Duce had less visibility than at home as he favoured the use of a global image of Fascist Italy to inform foreign publics regarding the effort of transformation promoted by using images of public works and buildings, like the reclaiming of the swamps, or images of ordinary individuals (especially young) which were abstract and idealised. When used, the image of the Duce, in line with the principle of a more subdued propaganda, was carefully selected, as, for example, on the occasion of propaganda literature destined for foreign publication between 1935 and 1936 in which Mussolini appeared while harvesting ‘the first cut of wheat in Littoria’.37 Photographs selected were those that ‘had a significance that went beyond the obvious content, thanks to which the reader was not only informed but also impressed’.38 Two examples will now be discussed to demonstrate the development of the photographic image of Mussolini for the foreign market. An album of press cuttings, in the Forlì photographic archive, includes a series of photographs which can help evaluate the initial representation of his image abroad during his visit to London as prime minister on the occasion of the Conference of the Allied Premiers. Despite the absence at this point, in 1922, of an official government photographic agency, these photographs are useful as they give an idea of the contribution of photography to the construction of Mussolini’s myth prior to Luce’s pervasive propaganda activity. Thus they aid us in assessing what importance was given to the circulation of his photographic image. A one-column article in a London weekly, The Sphere, on 16 December 1922, accompanying photographs of Mussolini stated that ‘if ever a man wielded impenetrability, as a knock-down argument, it is signor Mussolini. The Italian

36 Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 15. 37 Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero, p. 55. 38 Ibid., p. 69.

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Premier, you meet him, talk with him, and come away wondering if you have seen Mussolini the man, or the mask’. Focusing on Mussolini’s facial traits, the journalist H. M. Baird continued emphasising the Premier’s ‘handsome’ and ‘impressive’ bearing where his features ‘have obviously been built on a policy of aggression’. ‘The chin is a weapon of offence, jutting out like the toe of a navvy’s boot, and on the shaven jowl there is the black protest of an ill-suppressed beard’.39 Mussolini’s impressive physical impact is illustrated in the press cutting via a large black and white reproduction of him in a wing-collar and dark suit in Claridge’s Hotel (Fig. 5.2) looking at his attendant who faces him with another attendant behind him, both dressed in black. The same photograph was published, albeit cropped, in various English newspapers.40 In the weekly The Sphere it was accompanied by two more familiar images of Mussolini which were inserted in an album of press cuttings made by Paulucci who as Foreign Minister accompanied Mussolini on the trip. Both images, reproduced in a small format and glued above the main and larger photograph, portray Mussolini during a private occasion in swimming trunks and vest-like over-garment, with a leather belt around the waist, on the beach in Levanto near La Spezia. The image was taken by the photographer Nino de Poi between 1920 and 1922.41 Next to it is a photograph of him while fencing, which is described in the caption of the English The Sphere, as ‘Mussolini as a Fencer – Taking exercise before beginning his ministerial duties’42 (Fig. 5.3). It is not clear whether the main image of Mussolini ‘with two of his Fascist visitors in their black shirts’, as referred in the caption of The Sphere, was taken by an Italian or an English photographer, but it is interesting to find the same photograph in current literature described

39 Archivio di Stato Forlì, Fotografico Ist. Naz. Luce, Walker’s Century Scrap & Newscutting Book, No. 4. 312. 40 In the Daily Herald, 11 December 1922, there is the same photograph of Mussolini

and a Blackshirt with the caption: ‘Signor Mussolini with his personal attendant and bodyguard’. 41 The photograph published in The Sphere was later retouched to remove the partly visible head of a child behind Mussolini’s left shoulder and published in postcard form in 1923. 42 The Sphere, 16 December 1922, p. 279.

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Fig. 5.2 This image was taken in Claridges of Mussolini with two Blackshirts during a visit to London in December 1922

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Fig. 5.3 Left, shows the image above reproduced in The Sphere on 16 December 1922. It is interesting to note the two inset images of Mussolini in a bathing costume and fencing

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in the caption as ‘Mussolini in Rome in December 1922, at Palazzo Chigi with Aldo Finzi’.43 The discrepancy between the captions of this identical image reminds us not to accept the testimony of Mussolini’s images at face value, since detached from their original context the image can easily be misinterpreted or erroneously described. Captions provide the reader with information but also seek to shape responses to images. Mussolini’s face and posture in the image published in The Sphere do not correspond to someone who ‘possesses the dreadful immobility of a mask in a Greek tragedy’.44 Were it not for our knowing what he would become, Mussolini in this image could have been any official functionary. A decade later, the start of the aggression against Ethiopia in 1935 was used by the regime as a testing ground for the Ministry for Press and Propaganda both for internal and international distribution with an intense production of photographs during the whole of that year.45 Many of the images initially sent to the Embassy in Paris were later sent to the photographic agency France-Presse, which acted as an intermediary for distribution to over a hundred newspapers in France. The images were chosen to document the innovation of Fascism in the social and economic field. A particular series of 36 images of the Duce in all aspects of his life, from family man to the Head of Government, was prepared at the request of the Paris Embassy. Other images were also sent on the occasion of an Exhibition on Italian art to make ‘Fascist’ shop window displays for various Parisian bookshops, among which was Flammarion on the Boulevard des Italiens, where 24 large prints of Mussolini were displayed in the shop window (Fig. 5.4). This was the first time that there had been such an impressive and varied display of Mussolini’s photographic image in the centre of Paris.46

43 Chessa, Dux, p. 74. 44 ‘The London Conference of Reparations’, The Sphere, 16 December 1922, p. 279. 45 Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero, p. 75. 46 The Parisian bookshop Flammarion dispalyed a ‘Vetrina del Duce’ in February 1935, Archivio centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Cultura popolare, Reports, b. 3, fasc. ‘Report n. 28/A Activities of Italo Sulliotti, editor of La Nuova Italia, Paris’. Autorizzazione n. 480/04, in Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero, p. 79.

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Fig. 5.4 The bookshop Flammarion in Paris in the 1920s. Note the repeated images of Mussolini

Luce and the Press During the 1920s, drawings modelled on photographs were often used for Mussolini’s image. This may have been partly due to limitations of printing technology, but the preference for a familiar visual code acted as a stimulus to designers when supporting with illustrations the ‘novelty’ of the photograph in the printed newspaper.47 The very popular illustrations by Achille Beltrame became the frontpage ‘signature’ of La Domenica del Corriere for almost half a century, and during the whole course of the Ventennio, the drawings which were closely based on photographs met the desire of a public that preferred

47 See ‘Incisione e/o fotografia. L’Illustrazione Italiana e La Domenica del Corriere’, in Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 52.

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the epic transformation of reality to reality itself.48 Beltrame’s drawings of Mussolini were not in fact always modelled on a single official photograph as shown in a document from Archivio Storico of Corriere della Sera, testifying to the close relationship between Mussolini’s official photographs and drawings. The preference for drawings over photographs reflected the conservative cultural approach of the middle classes, who were reluctant to accept photographs in broadsheets, preferring to see them in a separate magazine such as L’Illustrazione Italiana. One of the criteria for selecting photographs of Mussolini and rejecting others was sharpness; Luce required photographs be first of all clear and easy to appreciate. Therefore, all the subjects, principally the Duce, had to be in focus. In 1933, during military manoeuvres in the Langhe, Piedmont, Mussolini appeared in a Beltrame drawing on the front page of La Domenica del Corriere on 3 September, helping a gun team pull their weapon up a hill (Fig. 5.5).49 In order to give Beltrame some material to work from, the editor Aldo Borelli wrote to the correspondent, Luigi Barzini Jr., asking him to send any image he had of Mussolini and the artillerymen, which he duly did.50 The graphic result was a perfect example of Beltrame’s ability to satisfy the ‘client’, here indirectly but unmistakably Mussolini. He followed the source material while amplifying the principal content and creating an atmosphere with a purpose similar to a poster to convince the public to come in and dream.51 If we compare Mussolini portrayed between two Blackshirts in 1923 during his visit to London to some Luce photographs of only a few years

48 Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 52. 49 La Domenica del Corriere in 1933 had an average a circulation of 1.255.826 copies,

in Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera, Diffusione e Vendita, f. 21, tirature La Domenica del Corriere. 50 Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera, sezione carteggio, 94c, Barzini Jr. (Beltrame remained in Milan and never visited the places and events he illustrated.) Fondazione Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera conducted a lengthy telephone research to check whether the addressee of the correspondence was either Luigi Barzini senior who, according Carlotti in La fotografia e fotografia carried with him a small Kodak to support his articles, or his son Luigi Barzini Jr. I was told by the archivist that it was most probably Barzini Jr., who was a young correspondent during that period, and that Barzini senior, back from America and working for Il Mattino, was not on good terms with Corriere della Sera and its editor Borelli. 51 Elisabetta Camerlo, La Lettura, 1901–1945. Storia e indici (Bologna: CLUEB, 1992), p. 75.

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Fig. 5.5 A Beltrame drawing from a photograph, 3 September 1933

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later, the official photograph of his visit to London looks particularly stiff and lifeless. Still in the age of the tripod camera, the photographer who took this image seemed to have had more than enough time to prepare meticulously the composition, the posture and expressions of the subjects, the construction of the scene, the arrangement of the objects, the furniture, the clothes, all according to ‘familiar conventions of genre painting’.52 This was a traditional style that Luce continued to adopt, especially for official photographs taken indoors, and clearly does not reflect the era of ‘candid camera’, a phrase coined in the 1920s, when photographs began to be taken of individuals in ‘awkward moments when least expected’.53 Highly staged photographs of Mussolini, like the one taken in London, would have required an elaborate technique and stage management with appropriate equipment.

Luce Equipment By the 1930s more compact cameras such as Rolleiflex and Leica were available, but given the requirement for quality and precision, Luce photographers often used the heavier and bulkier pre-1926 German cameras such as Contessa Nettel (9 × 12) and Palmos (9 × 12), or the Italian large format Piseroni, and continued to do so at least until the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in 1932. An inventory from the archive in Forlì with a description of all the equipment in use by Luce photographers, which Paulucci requested in 1933, is a precious document that helps us understand what technology was available to Mussolini’s official photographers and the impact this may have had on their photographs of him.54 Although bulkier with film or plates carried in a purpose-built container subsequently prepared for exposure in a separate single or double chassis (plate holder), these box or bellows cameras were technically reliable and of excellent quality, perhaps one of the reasons why Luce photographers were encouraged to use them. To carry all this equipment required one or more assistants. Some reference material, such as an unpublished Luce photograph and a documentary 52 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 23. 53 Roger Hargreaves, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street ex.cat. (London:

National Portrait Gallery, 2007), p. 54. 54 Archivio di Stato Forlì, Paulucci di Calboli, b. 247: Ist. Naz. Luce, f. 8, c. 42, sc.

142.

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of the Duce, in which photographers can be seen, help to determine their working conditions. An image of Mussolini in uniform visiting the ruins of Sabratha, near Tripoli, in 1926 illustrates the moment when an unknown photographer prepares to release the shutter as the Duce walks past.55 To be ready to photograph the Duce, the photographer would previously have set up his large format camera on a tripod, adjusted the depth of field, estimated focus, measured the light and set the shutter speed, put the photographic plate in position, then as shown in the image wait to expose the plate (take the shot). Afterwards he would record the exposure and place the plate in a separate secure holder. Ten years later, in a very different situation, Mussolini was photographed by someone we can only assume was one of the regular photographers, perhaps Appetiti, who, in a Luce documentary, is seen photographing the Duce while balancing on the edge of a balcony holding a lighter but still large format camera. The camera looks as though it was difficult to use without a tripod, especially in an awkward position, and yet the photographer waits for the precise moment when Mussolini raises his right arm saluting the crowd to open the shutter, and thus take what would be an iconic shot of the event complying with Luce propaganda directives.56 Equally important is the naming in the inventory of some of the photographers who regularly worked for Luce and photographed il Duce. Istituto Luce has a vast iconographical archive but most of the documentation relative to aspects of the professional relationship between Luce and the photographers during the regime can be found in the State Archive in Forlì. The inventory requested by Paulucci in the 1930s, among others, mentions two particular photographers,57 Boratto and Appetiti. Ercole Boratto, born in 1886 in a small village in the Aosta Valley, was the dictator’s official chauffeur from the day he came to power in October 1922 55 ‘Mussolini visita le rovine di Sabratha 1926’, in Archivio Olycom, Milan, n. 744004/43. 56 ‘Discorso del Duce, 25 ottobre 1936, Imola’, in Archivio Storico Luce, documentary but visible on line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iASgGpNqgtw. 57 The photographers mentioned in the 1930s Luce inventory are: Spartaco Appetiti,

Eugenio Bava, Ercole Boratto, Salvatore Braschi, Antonio Breschi, Renato Cartoni, Mario Craveri, Alfredo Cecchetti, Nicola Codagnone, Eduardo D’Accurso, Guido Giovinazzi, Giovanni Grimaldi, Angelo Jannarelli, il Commendator Ridolfi, Vittorio Santiangeli and Giuseppe Tommei, in Archivio Paulucci di Calboli, Archivio di Stato Forlì, b. 247: Ist. Naz. Luce, f. 8, c. 42, sc. 142.

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until he was deposed in July 1943, after which Boratto wrote a memoir that was kept for years in the archives of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA,58 until it was found and made public in 2004 by the researcher Mario José Cereghino. Two articles subsequently published in La Repubblica (2004) and The Times (2006) focused almost completely on the ‘sexual appetite’ of the Duce ignoring other aspects of ‘Mussolini’s charisma’, including his photogenic qualities.59 From the Luce inventory though, we learn that Mussolini’s personal driver was equipped, by Luce, with a medium format Ernemann 6 × 9 camera, 1 Zeiss lens, 3 double plate-holders and 1 filmpak carrier, which in other words meant that Boratto used a good traditional camera that was quickly becoming old technology, not because its image quality was poor, but because the overall process was time consuming and only allowed for one or two shots at a time. Since Boratto ‘spent more time as a companion of Mussolini than anyone else’,60 he had plenty of opportunity to take personal photographs of him. Yet, despite this fly-on-the-wall memoir, judged ‘reliable’ by OSS, no photographs are credited to him. Nevertheless Boratto would have been an obvious choice as a photographer given the frequent and varied opportunities he would have had to photograph Mussolini, especially on those occasions where Luce, for logistic reasons, would have had difficulty sending a professional photographer. From the story of Boratto, whom, Nicola Caracciolo defines as ‘Benito’s Leporello’,61 it is possible to draw parallels with a more recent past, that is with a strikingly similar photographer, Umberto Cicconi, who was also the personal driver of Bettino Craxi for twenty years until 1994.62 The emphasis on the ‘sexual debauchery’ of these public figures is common to both these memoirs. Perhaps this confirms that ‘sex’ was an 58 Some of this was published in a different form fifty years ago in ‘Giornale del Mattino’, in twenty-two articles between 24 March and 18 April 1946, when the newspaper changed adopting its original name ‘Il Messaggero’, in ‘A spasso col Duce. Vizi e amori nel diario dell’autista’, Attilio Bolzoni and Tano Gullo, La domenica di Repubblica, Sunday, 28 November 2004, pp. 33–37. 59 Bolzoni and Gullo, La domenica di Repubblica, Sunday, 28 November 2004, pp. 33– 37; Nicholas Farrell, ‘The Italian Stallion’, The Sunday Times, 26 February 2006. 60 Farrell, The Sunday Times, 26 February 2006. 61 Nicola Caracciolo, ‘Il Leporello di Benito’, La domenica di Repubblica, 28 November

2004, p. 37. 62 Umberto Cicconi with Luciano Consoli, Umberto C. dalla borgata all’archivio Craxi (Rome: Memori, 2008), p. 17.

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aspect of charisma and ‘a factor in the gendering of power’, as argued by Stephen Gundle in an article on Berlusconi’s particular methods of rule and personal style.63

Luce ‘Favourite’: Spartaco Appetiti In the Forlì archive among the numerous operating procedures issued by Paulucci there are a few pertinent to the professional responsibilities of Appetiti within the photographic department that also reveal that he was assigned specifically to the Duce. For example, in 1935 one of these instructions confirms Appetiti as being responsible for the photographic department both for current affairs and Africa Orientale.64 Another instruction issued by Paulucci in 1937, on the occasion of the Duce’s trip to Sicily, mentions Appetiti who was appointed as the photographer ‘to work exclusively on the person of the Leader, throughout the visit’.65 Spartaco Appetiti is also mentioned in publications as one of the names appearing most frequently on the back of original prints.66 Through archival research and interviews with the ‘paparazzi’ Sergio Spinelli and Mario Tursi,67 founders of Roma Press Photo agency, we now know that 63 Stephen Gundle, ‘Berlusconi, il sesso e il mancato scandalo mediatico’, in Politica in Italia, ed. by Marco Giuliani and Erik Jones (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), pp. 73–93. 64 Archivio di Stato Forlì, Archivio Giacomo Paulucci di Calboli Barone, b. 250 bis: Istituto Nazionale Luce – Ordini di Servizio e Comunicati, 1933–1938, vol. 3: no title, 5 gennaio 1935–30 December 1935. 65 Fonti d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004), p. 449 and Archivio di Stato Forlì, Archivio Giacomo Paulucci di Calboli Barone, b. 250 bis: Istituto Nazionale Luce – Ordini di Servizio e Comunicati, 1933–1938, vol. 5: Istituto Luce. Ordini di Servizio 1937, c. 52, sc. 52. 66 Chessa, Dux, p. 12. 67 In March 2008 I conducted a telephone interview with the photographers Sergio

Spinelli and Mario Tursi (1929–2008) founders of Roma Photo Press and who first worked at VEDO the agency of Adolfo Porry Pastorel at the end of the Second World War. As a result of my research more names can be added to the existing Luce file as well as those referred to in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce and Chessa, Dux. A more complete list of those who photographed Mussolini should include, Aldo Tonti cinema-photographer; Giuseppe Genovesi; Carletti (first name unknown); Luigi Leoni (1899–1991); Cesare Colò who worked exclusively for Luce; Alberto Porry Pastorel (son of Adolfo Porry Pastorel) who, according to Tursi, was an excellent photographer and photographed many events, reported missing in Russia during the Second World War. Pietro Canton who sometimes worked together with Appetiti; Osvaldo Restaldi; Antonio Breschi also for Il Popolo di Roma and La Tribuna; Salvatori Braschi; Romolo Del Papa

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Appetiti had his own busy studio, in Piazza di Sant’Eustachio, 82,68 next to the Pantheon in Rome, worked for the Vatican as well as Luce, thanks, as Enrico Sturani confirms, to his contacts in the political world.69 Despite his ‘attitude’, Sturani adds, ‘Appetiti is mediocre’, quoting a criticism by Mario Morgantini, a dealer and distributor of photographs in 1934 who accused the Luce photographic department of being unprofessional and run by managers who had no knowledge of the photographic trade.70 Moreover, Emanuele Valerio Marino, when mentioning Appetiti, defines him as ‘the favourite despite being impertinent’.71 Whether ‘mediocre’, ‘well connected’, ‘cheeky’ or not, Appetiti’s name appears on the back of one of the most iconic series of photographs still used today to illustrate the photogenic appeal of the Duce. From an original Luce catalogue the image of Mussolini bare-chested on the snowy slopes of Terminillo was taken by Appetiti in 1937 and reproduced on various photographic bases (Fig. 5.6). The ‘frozen’ look of Mussolini as skier, similar to the previously mentioned image taken in London many years before, was mostly due to the technology available yet does not detract from the potency this famous image must have had at the time. Similar to another sequence from the same series, also reproduced in Giorgio Pini in 1939, Mussolini as skier by Appetiti epitomises the development of the Duce’s photographic projection. As with him bare-chested harvesting or in swimming trunks on the beach of Riccione seen in the previous chapter, this image underlines the unprecedented behaviour of a head of government. By stripping to the waist and thus creating an original and memorable photo opportunity, Mussolini embodied both the attributes of the dynamic man for Il Tempo and who also continued to work after the war; Guido Ungaro for Il Popolo d’Italia; De Martino Il Giornale d’Italia, Savio for the theatre; Maceo Casadei from Forlì was a painter and photographer and apparently an excellent retoucher. And also Remo Nassi; Pietro Canton; Luigi Zavagli; Ungaro Migliorini; Pario De Martino. Among those who could be considered regular Luce photographers were Spartaco Appetiti, Armando Bruni, Guido Ungaro, Luigi Zavagli, Vittorio della Valle, Luigi Leoni who all in turn were part of a larger group that has yet to be identified and studied. 68 The postal address of Spartaco Appetiti, Piazza Eustachio, 82, Rome was provided by Fabrizio Canato, Human Resources at SEAT, Turin (4 March 2008). 69 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 139. 70 ACS, SPD, CO, 15.881 in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 145. 71 Valerio Marino, ‘I fotografi del Duce’, in Franzinelli and Marino, Il Duce proibito, p.

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Fig. 5.6 Mussolini at Terminillo by Appetiti in January 1937

and of the popular sensual icon. Many years after that first visit to London in 1922, the audacity of the pose at Terminillo shows that Mussolini was completely at ease in front of the camera with his confident bearing suggesting a special complicity between him and the photographer. This is so, even though, especially during official ceremonies, Mussolini would not grant any concession to Luce photographers. ‘Dictators, at least this

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one, do not like to be told what to do and therefore one could not give any instructions during the shoot’,72 said the American journalist Edwin Ware Hullinger who reported an incident that confirms this. During the filming of the Duce’s first cinematographic portrait, a cameraman waited in anticipation for Mussolini to walk through a door. After shooting a vast amount of film, he paused, the Duce then began to move but, by the time the camera was working again, he had passed and it would have been impossible to ask for a retake.73 Still preferring the greater detail rendered by larger negatives, Luce photographers continued to use larger format cameras. But the universal tendency to mimic a spontaneous look made fashionable by the small-camera users was, as in this image, becoming obvious.74 Through the lens of Appetiti, the viewer had the illusion of entering the intimate and personal sphere of their idol, the Duce, who, as with royals revealing via images their personal life, showed himself in a moment of relaxation yet effectively serving a pedagogical purpose.75 The caption accompanying the series of images at Terminillo in L’Illustrazione Italiana on 24 January 1937 reads: The extraordinary physical performance of the Duce was evident in every type of sport that he applied himself to, which he would do once the affairs of State had been dealt with. Pilot, both civil and military, motorist and motorcyclist, swimmer, fencer and horseman, the Duce applies himself to every sport with exemplary skills and dogged determination. Here is the Boss during a stay at Terminillo with his son Romano dedicating themselves to the winter sports.76 72 ACSM, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto, b. 36—Photoplay, New York, August. The document reports (in Italian) from New York about how Edwin Ware Hullinger made the first cinematographic biography of the Duce, with some of his impressions as ‘astro cinematografico’. 73 ACSM, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto, b. 36—Photoplay, New York, August. The document reports (in Italian) from New York about how Edwin Ware Hullinger made the first cinematographic biography of the Duce, with some of his impressions as ‘astro cinematografico’. 74 Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, 3rd edn (London: Laurence

King Publishing, 2010), p. 237. 75 When visiting Hungary the interior of the Royal train including personal apartments was photographed for La Domenica del Corriere, 23 May 1937 and L’Illustrazione Italiana, 23 May 1937. 76 L’Illustrazione Italiana, 24 January 1937, front page; the images of Mussolini skiing bare-chested appeared in L’Illustrazione Italiana Sportiva, 28 January 1937.

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Perhaps precisely because of the imperfection of Appetiti’s image of the Duce, this photograph epitomises Luce style at its best. A lack of contrast, the shadows of other people or the photographer visible on the snow, a ski casually dropped on the ground, may well represent the technical and aesthetic failures attached to Luce’s reputation. Likewise the contradiction posed by an adulatory caption that does not reflect the subject was already present in the imagination of Mussolini’s early photograph in The Sphere. Here, fifteen years later, an older version of the benevolent ‘superman’, now also a proud father who was seen in public with his children, was photographed by Appetiti in a rigid pose like a classical portrait. The focus is on the physique of the Duce as ‘skier’, even though he is not on skis and is apparently engaged in a sport not usually practised barechested. The Duce’s body ‘enjoys its spectacularity as the object of the gaze’, functioning as an icon of popular culture that invites the viewer of every class to ‘consume’ it.77 Appetiti may have been an ‘anonymous’ photographer or at times considered ‘mediocre’ or even ‘impertinent’, yet he, like other Luce photographers, contributed to a process of representation where official culture deployed the leader’s body as a ‘form of interpellation into national identity’, turned into a very successful popular icon.78 Despite its imperfections, Luce created a style or a ‘brand’, as it would be called today, that through mass advertisement and new promotion techniques reproduced an image that ‘successfully interpellated the masses as consumers’.79 Within this process, the Duce was the ‘locus of production of desire’, indeed the dominant feature of Luce photographic production,80 the ‘site of the production of pleasure’, as Maurizia Boscagli puts it when analysing Nietzschean masculinity.81 The ‘modern

77 Maurizia Boscagli, Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford: Westview Press, 1996), p. 97. 78 Ibid., p. 93. 79 Ibid., p. 94. 80 To state that the photographers of Istituto Luce worked principally to shape Mussolini’s image is not an exaggeration if we consider that the dominant feature of photographic production was indeed Mussolini, and it has been calculated that between 1927 and 1940 the Duce’s image occupied about 20% of the Istituto Luce photographic catalogues, in Luca Criscenti, ‘La memoria in archivio’, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, p. 295. 81 Boscagli, Eye on the Flesh, p. 11.

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spectacularisation of masculinity’ deployed by the Duce was, within the specific cultural and social scenario of the Fascist regime, a vehicle for the spectacle of commodity culture. Rather than pleasurable, Fascism was ultimately a culture of death, celebrating a ‘body fit to fight’ ambiguously made available ‘in the spectacular rituals of the gymnastic or military parade. The unclothed male body was absorbed in the sportive gesture as an object of desire both for the female and for the male gaze’.82 ‘Come and die. It’ll be great fun. And there’s great health in the preparation’, the English poet Rupert Brooke wrote with ironic bravado to his friend John Drinkwater in January 1915,83 implicitly referring to the Nietzschean impulse to nature and vitalism which was part of a widespread turn of the century discourse on the ruin of the West, often compared to an ill organism, that in turn informed the Fascist version of ‘youth culture’. The Fascist superman, encoded in the body of the proletarianaspiring-to-be-bourgeois Mussolini, was in this ‘spectacular’ photograph by Appetiti made available as a site of an alternative ‘constellation of signs symbolising forces from personal integrity to national power’.84 The Nietzschean superman combined proletarian muscles and the aristocratic will for power, here was visually ‘split’ in two, with the half proletarian Duce boasting his bare chest while the other, ‘elitist’ half wore a skiing suit. The composition represented a strategic deployment of an archaism at once able to acknowledge a tribute to the labourer’s body, used in propaganda material of the Socialist Party since 1896,85 and an unconscious appeal to a new kind of aristocratic warrior based on new aspirations of Fascism. Mussolini’s construction of a strong male body relied on a view of sexuality as the channel where the weakness of leisure (and pleasure) was made acceptable by a glamourised ‘voice of the blood’86 ; war was aestheticised to promote its marketability. Mussolini was the first modern Western head of government to adopt this new style corporeality. Since his time other heads of government,

82 Ibid., p. 17. 83 Ibid., p. 76. 84 Ibid., p. 78. 85 O. Rodella, Avanti! Giornale Politico Quotidiano del Partito Socialista, 1896. (Poster)

(Rome: Lit. E. Perino) in Rossa. Immagine e comunicazione del lavoro 1848–2006, ed. by Luigi Martini (Milan: Skira, 2007), p. 81. 86 Ibid., pp. 78–79.

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especially the few who were sufficiently endowed physically, have followed a similar trend and enjoyed pin-up status. Images in the press of Russia’s bare-chested Vladimir Putin enjoying swimming, fishing and horse-riding for the benefit of the cameras, and of the US president-elect Barack Obama ‘showing off his impressively muscled tummy and a toned pair of “pecs” while on holiday in Hawaii’87 as the Daily Mail commented serve to illustrate the point (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8). In this instance ‘war chest’ carries a message clearly calculated to count towards the national selfimage, serving like Mussolini, as a role model for people to shape up, while also evoking, since war is still more than a remote possibility, the corporeality of the superman. The plethora of collectively constructed myths and symbols that were mobilised in Fascist Italy to stir a nation into ‘revolutionary’ trance was converted into stamps, postcards, posters, drawings in newspapers, magazines and school texts, and other visual references. In the vast majority of case these were derived from Luce photographs. The corporate image of the Duce was constructed, produced and distributed by Luce under a management that was composed neither of intellectuals and publicity professionals nor experts in photography, but by men who were chosen via recommendation rather than ability. Technological competence was not considered as important as ideological rectitude. Constant communication existed between Luce management and staff, and the organs of mass communication in charge of controlling and propagating Fascist doctrine—Mussolini, and his Press Office, the varied and differing Ministers of Popular Culture, the official news agency Stefani and other representative institutions spread throughout the national and international territory such as Luce agencies or Institutes of Italian Culture abroad. Coordination between these organs of communication was not without difficulty. The ‘Fascist state’ was a complex ‘modern state, [with] its subdivisions into different ministries and agencies with different functions’ and not necessarily coordinated with one another.88 Luce photographic production did not stand by itself in a vacuum; it was linked on the one hand to manufacturers of materials and on the other to the distributors of the product, who were publishers, editors,

87 Vladimir Putin, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1100584/Commander-briefsObama-shows-war-chestholiday-Hawaii.html. 88 Forgacs, ‘How Exceptional’, in Bonsaver and Gordon, Culture, Censorship, p. 11.

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Fig. 5.7 Mussolini at Terminillo in 1937

business leaders and the public. Although Luce’s prolific photographic production and circulation demonstrated a modern understanding on the part of the regime of the medium’s potential, the Istituto also had to face a series of difficulties, particularly concerning distribution. A few but notable signs of discontent showed how the modern media’s need to

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Fig. 5.8 Russian President Vladimir Putin fishing on the Khemchik River in the Republic of Tuva in 2007 (Sputnik/Alamy Stock Photo)

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be dynamic was incompatible with the rigidity of a centralised bureaucratic structure such as Luce.89 Already in 1929, for economic reasons, the Luce Photographic Service began to charge for prints distributed to national newspapers which previously had been free. These newspapers had operating requirements which Luce was often unable to respect and papers not based in Rome, for example, could receive images from Luce with a delay of a day or more. These delays could be due to the need of obtain approval from the directors of the Istituto and the need to satisfy the various entities responsible for censorship. This led to some newspapers complaining that their subscription was of little worth. Consequently they made increasing use of freelance photographers who were more efficient than the state agency.90 These photographers, defined as photojournalists, are the subject of the next section.

89 D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, I, pp. 94–95. 90 D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, p. 95; L. Bomba and R. Orlando, ‘Il Luce sia strumento effettivo di propaganda fascista’, L’Italia vivente, 17 (1933), p. 7 in D’Autilia, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, I, p. 114. Further signals of criticism and discontent regarding the photographic department, in particular the distribution of press images to journalists, were concerning the photo-cinematographic department created on Mussolini’s order in September 1935 for A.O. Africa Orientale in Asmara under the direction of Luciano De Feo (later transferred to Addis Abeba). In a letter from Ciro Poggiali, correspondent of Corriere della Sera dated 14 September 1936, addressed to Girolamo De Bosdari, the Consul responsible for the Press Office in Ethiopia, underlining the importance of rapid distribution of photographs, criticised the Istituto Luce in Addis Abeba which, according to him, had adopted towards journalists an unexplicable ‘atteggiamento di ostilità’, in Anna Grazia Petaccia, ‘Archivio Centrale dello Stato: altri fondi’, in Fonti d’archivio per la storia del Luce 1925–1945, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia (Rome: Luce, 2004), p. 321.

CHAPTER 6

The Press-Image: Photojournalists and Agencies

Photojournalism In addition to Istituto Luce, press photographers made an important contribution to the extensive photographic representation of Mussolini. Among the many independent photographers working alone or on a newspaper staff, some have left a more conspicuous legacy such as Vincenzo Carrese, Luigi Leoni, Adolfo Porry Pastorel, Amerigo Petitti, Tino Petrelli and Vitullo.1 Photojournalism was an important source for images that were used as propaganda thus contributing significantly to the construction of Mussolini’s cult of personality. To help evaluate the contribution of photojournalism, it is useful to trace its development from the early years prior to Mussolini’s rise to power and examine how the nature of photo reportage developed from a personalised perspective to a more controlled product. Only a few years after the invention of photography in the 1840s was the first ‘photojournalistic’ image taken,2 although the term ‘photojournalist’ did not become current until after the First World War and 1 Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), p. 145. Part of the archive of another photojournalist known as ‘Vitullo’ has been discovered and digitised by the Italian news agency AGI and discussed in Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 13. 2 Biow and Stelzner produced in 1842 an image of the aftermath of a four day fire in Hamburg, in Neri Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere. Introduzione al fotogiornalismo (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2005), p. 35.

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certainly not in Italy where the terms photojournalism and photojournalist are still not commonly used, only been included in dictionaries since the 1950s.3 Photography as a new medium was claimed to be more truthful to reality and, contrary to artworks, which were employed in the press to tell reality in the form of drawings and illustrations, the photograph (a print resulting from a negative) could not lie since it was seen as a mechanical reproduction of what the camera and not the photographer saw. In the second half of the nineteenth century, photography started to be used not only for commercial and artistic purposes but also as visual testimony of surrounding realities. Photographs showed unsettling situations, dealing with difficult conditions and realities in society. The photograph increasingly became a tool of the press as a new way of journalism was developed and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, photojournalism was becoming an ever more necessary ingredient in mass communication. By the 1920s technological developments in conjunction with press requirements, such as photoengraving, enabled the reproduction of sharp, well-defined images to be placed next to the written text and both America and Europe were illustrating text-based news with photographs. Germany greatly contributed to the development of photojournalism thanks in part to the strong tradition of printed newspapers and numerous periodicals, which by the 1930s could count around twenty million readers. Berlin had at least ten photographic agencies linked to newspapers all over Central Europe, and many of the thousands of photographs of the German Revolution were taken by experienced agency photographers, who went day after day in search of images.4 New improved technology that speeded up the method of transmitting photographs over a distance, together with the adoption of smaller and lighter cameras, coincided with the definitive establishment of the common use of photographs as opposed to drawings or illustrations in the press. More sophisticated and sensitive plates allowed photographers to shorten the exposure that went from minutes to seconds and contributed to the production of the first snapshots. Politicians learned how to manage events for photographic effect, and the 1920s and 1930s witnessed a large scale expansion of

3 Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere, p. 9. 4 http://www.answers.com/topic/photojournalism.

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photojournalism driven by urbanisation, consumerism, and the parallel growth of sports and mass entertainment.5

The Italian Context While highly regarded in the States, photojournalism in Italy has only recently become a subject of study. The limited interest in photography in Italy was due to its being associated for so long with craftsmanship rather than art or dynamic communication. The ‘bad’ reputation of photojournalism in Italy was perhaps worsened by the association with the character Paparazzo in Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita (1960), who since then has been seen as typifying pushy and intrusive celebrity photographers.6 The continuing negative connotation of photojournalists after the Second World War, although seemingly irrelevant to images relating to Mussolini’s period of press visibility, has nevertheless created an attitude that has led to images being lost or, when in archives, at times systematically catalogued but more often kept randomly. In Italy for an early example of photojournalism we can refer to a series taken by Luca Comerio (1878–1940) documenting the workingclass insurrection of 1898 in Milan. Together with Giuseppe Serralunga Langhi, Comerio supplied the weekly periodical L’Illustrazione Italiana with photographs of the uprising.7 Four of these images were selected for their ‘shocking effect’. They stressed significant moments, for example representing protesters in an arrogant and defiant pose or the authorities restoring order, thus distorting the complexity and succession of events. One of these photographs was censored by the authorities because it portrayed a protester falling from a barricade. Comerio himself reported that two photographers had been arrested and convicted, while a third had been killed. Comerio had already made a name for himself in 1894 when he decided to secretly photograph the Italian king Umberto I during a state visit. He made the image into a poster and sent it to the king who appreciated it so much that he asked Comerio to print another five. The photographic series of the revolt in 1898 brought Comerio

5 Ibid. 6 Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere, p. 9. 7 Annalisa Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi a Milano dall’Ottocento ad oggi (Milan: Abitare

Segesta, 2000), p. 56.

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success and, after their publication in L’Illustrazione Italiana, he became the official photographer of the royal family.8 This episode is significant in that it shows how, in Italy, from the outset, the public impact of photography had been controversial. On the one hand it was accepted enthusiastically and on the other presented a potential risk for its intrinsically ‘democratic’ trait. A camera could be used to witness and circulate, as well as easily reproduce uncomfortable social and political realities. The potential impact of this new way of seeing and its possible manipulation was first evident through the pioneering battlefield photography during the Crimean War (1853–1856).9 Because the public craved a more realistic representations of news stories, it was common for newsworthy photographs to be exhibited in galleries or to be copied photographically in limited numbers.10 In Italy, a deeply-rooted conservative approach to technological and scientific advancement went hand in hand with official suspicion towards forms of artistic expression that were not controlled from above. Photography was seen as a potential threat to the establishment and thus a medium best left to the activity of a few craftsmen or as a hobby for some wealthy men.11 Even before the censorship exercised in Comerio’s days, freelance photographers were kept remote from the important events or conflicts. In 1859, after the carnage on the Solferino battlefield, photographers, along with ‘thieves and despoilers of the dead’ were banned.12 Similarly in 1861, the papal authorities ordered anyone possessing a camera to declare it. Not only were professionals photographers checked by the police, something that continued until comparatively recently, but amateurs, especially if they had a camera, were treated as if they were carrying a weapon. Despite the underlying conservative or repressive attitude, freelance photography could not be easily stopped. Photography was part of scientific progress and social change and was becoming very attractive also for potential commercial advantage. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the photographic industry was already

8 Ibid., p. 57. 9 Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere, p. 97. 10 http://www.answers.com/topic/photojournalism. 11 Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere, p. 96. 12 Ibid., p. 96.

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a reality,13 and it counted a large number of operators, as well as printers and assistants. The proliferation of photographic studios created further jobs for numerous artisans. Paper, glass, light industries and all activities connected with photography, in particular opticians and chemists, flourished. From the late nineteenth century, new reproduction techniques favoured the development of illustrated periodicals particularly in Germany and the English-speaking world. Differing from the local and limited circulation newspaper, the new illustrated weekly had a national readership catering to wide public taste. Initially, some publications such as the Italian version of Monde Illustré had a limited success while L’Illustrazione Italiana was founded in 1875 and remained in publication for 90 years. It was relatively cheap, with reassuring themes and lay out, using illustrations that remained popular even after technology made photographic reproduction viable, since engraving was ideal for refining official iconography by juxtaposing the formal and the banal such as photographs with ‘grenadiers in full uniform and men in rags’.14 The readers of this type of publication were members of the upper middle class who were becoming aware of the national dimension. From 1899 La Domenica del Corriere appeared as a weekly supplement to the daily paper Corriere della Sera, dedicating many pages to photography, supported by captions in which photographers were always credited. In 1907, the general public was invited to participate in an ongoing competition of readers’ photographs with the aim of introducing new themes and curiosities. At the turn of the century, professional photographers such as the Alinari brothers, special correspondents like Luigi Barzini (senior) or the previously mentioned Luca Comerio, all contributed to the process through which the camera was becoming an acceptable tool of communication. The Libyan invasion in 1911 was the testing ground for an official national photographic policy. Three military photographic teams were sent to document the enemy lines and life in the trenches, to construct a preformed image of the campaign where visual representation of repression and mass murders was strictly forbidden. The Great War was the first practical laboratory with hundreds of photographs published confirming that a growing number of Italian

13 Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 40. 14 Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere, p. 98.

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photojournalists were starting to acquire status. War correspondents and photographers worked in harmony with the views and instructions of the authorities. The Reparto Fotografico del Comando Supremo created an official Censorship Office in 1916 and for the first time some military were also equipped with cameras. In 1915 Rodolfo Namias, a research chemist and founder in 1894 of the photographic magazine Il Progresso Fotografico, expressed what presumably must have been the unanimous view of photographers. He argued for the war to be represented objectively in photography. Namias provided some interesting insights into the new technological developments, but also the way photography was seen as a prestigious marvel of technology that only advanced powers could afford to use. The increased diffusion of photographs in the press had changed the balance between the written word and images in favour of the latter. Visual patriotic forms of propaganda presented next to publicity images characterised the style of the press during Fascism, but rather than inventing it, Fascism merely inherited a practice that had already started during the Libyan conflict.

Photojournalists From the outset authorities in Fascist Italy used the communicative power of photography trying to influence photojournalistic production increasingly until it reached its peak in the Thirties.15 During the interwar years, a large number of photographers armed with cameras followed every step of the Duce as lead actor of Fascism, and photography contributed to a new form of journalism in which photographs prevailed.16 Although subjective, photography is a means of communication, but when restricted or repressed as it was during Fascism some historians consider that photojournalism cannot be said to have existed.17 Italo Zannier maintains that to talk about photojournalism during Fascism is a contradiction since its prerogative is freedom of interpretation. The personal interpretation of the photographer was not tolerated during Fascism. Rather the aim was ‘mystification’, a term which 15 Massimo Cutrupi, Il “Mondo” e la fotografia. Il fondo Pannunzio (Rome: Nuova Arnica Editrice, 2005), p. 11. 16 Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 67. 17 Italo Zannier, ‘1922/1943’, Il Diaframma Fotografia Italiana, 203 (1975), p. 24

in Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 82.

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Zannier prefers to use when addressing issues about photojournalism during the regime, since in this period photographs were taken and used with the purpose of confirming and visualising Fascist rhetoric.18 This prejudicial standpoint has led to photographers in general being considered as sympathetic to the regime, and thus not worthy of analysis since their work distorted the truth that photographs were deemed to communicate. In contrast to this view, an ideal set of criteria has been developed in recent years by scholars who study photographs as an historical source. Questions focusing on who produced the photograph or what the image communicated, and the distribution context seem even more necessary since due to ideological implications, historical iconographical material in Italy has been valued principally as illustrations and thus needs to be analysed and reviewed when evaluating the work of photojournalists operative during the Fascist regime. In the 1920s and 1930s what Luce lacked in originality, its photographers began to make up for in quantity (both the number of views taken and the extent of their circulation). Propaganda photography became a formalised element in all the various aspects of the regime’s public image. Increasingly the mass production of photographs, postcards and other by-products resembled that of a factory. Interestingly the photo historian Mary Warner Marien points out that during the interwar period ‘the glut of images was producing an increasingly visually sophisticated audience that rapidly came to see printed images as transitory and expendable’ with photography being linked to the expansion of industrialisation.19 Felix H. Man (1893–1985) developed the use of sequence in photography. One of his most important ‘photo-stories’ portrayed Mussolini during a typical day at work where the reader could view the Duce in a different light. In contrast with the familiar official pose, Mussolini can be seen here in his everyday surroundings undergoing his daily routine (Fig. 6.1). Man was the ideal photographer for this exercise, having had some success in capturing the more ‘intimate’ moments in the daily lives of notable personalities for the burgeoning German picture press. Man’s way of photographing was influenced by the ‘grandfather’ of photojournalism, the Hungarian editor Stefan Lorant (1901–1997). Lorant believed that

18 Ibid., p. 82. 19 Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, 3rd edn (London: Laurence

King Publishing, 2010), p. 236.

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Fig. 6.1 A double-page spread, in the German magazine Münchner Illustrierte also published in the British Weekly Illustrated, of Mussolini photographed by Felix Man in 1931

the camera should be used as a notebook; as the journalist used his pen to write in a supposedly unbiased manner, the camera should act simply as a window on reality.20 Another photograph extracted from one of Man’s photo-essays illustrating ‘A day in the life of Mussolini’ shows him, as if unaware of the camera, concentrating as normal on the task in hand (Fig. 6.2). This sort of image had the effect of humanising him, since representing the Duce in an everyday situation was different from the then accepted canon. This photo-essay was published in picture magazines

20 ‘The camera should be like the notebook of a trained reporter, to record events as they happen, without trying to stop them to make a picture’ (Stefan Lorant), in Harold Evans, Pictures on a Page: Photo-Journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing (London: Pimlico, 1978), p. 171.

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Fig. 6.2 Another image from the series with Mussolini behind his desk in the Sala Mappamondo. ‘Mussolini Giving Orders to Teruzzi, Commandant of the Fascist Militia, 1931’

around the world and its play-by-play narrative format established a new and widely popular paradigm for future photo-essays. These innovations were a consequence of the various technological improvements that were developed to satisfy the exponential growth in appetite for images that accompanied the developing information systems

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of Western society. The popularity of illustrated publications saw the growth in daily and weekly newspapers, plus magazines with the ensuing rivalry for original pictures.21 Consequently, the media aimed at securing the most engaging photographs of the Duce to satisfy increasing public interest, which was carefully managed by a regime which needed to calibrate the projection of a believable and imposing image, while avoiding excessive repetition or market saturation.22 The role of photojournalists was thus considered not simply as a silent (and silenced) technical support for the totalitarian ‘political theatre’, but also as playing a crucial part within a system, where cultural products are, as David Forgacs claims, ‘characteristically made to be distributed and sold on markets beyond the local level, regionally, nationally or internationally, that they tend to be made using technologies of mass reproduction and distribution, and that all this affects the ways in which the state intervenes in relation to them’.23 Focusing on the use of news photography for propaganda purposes, what follows will highlight the interrelation resulting from the differing objectives of branches of the Fascist state and photographic agencies, as well as the implementation by individual personalities of policy directives. Always conscious of its lowly status as a visual art, photography gained importance in the public sphere thanks to the development of modern technologies. Within the system of mediation and reproducibility, the agents and photojournalists were the ‘anonymous people who pursued their interests according to game-like rules and shared codes of communication’.24 To illustrate the cultural and social background of photojournalists during the interwar years, Cesare Colombo defines their origin as ‘proletarian’, since they usually came from the working class peasantry or families of immigrants and had a visual culture that was totally free of any formalism.25 Contrary to the traditional artist, photojournalists did not have a fine art background, nor did they take up photography 21 Marien, Photography, p. 167. 22 Nicola Tranfaglia, La stampa del regime 1932–1943. Le veline del Minculpop per

orientare l’informazione (Milan: Bompiani, 2005), p. 12. 23 David Forgacs, ‘How Exceptional were Culture-State Relations in Twentieth-Century Italy?’, in Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century, ed. by Guido Bonsaver and Robert S.C. Gordon (London: Legenda, 2005), p. 11. 24 Koepnick, Lutz, ‘Face/Off’, in Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany: Text as Spectacle, ed. by Gail Finney (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 221. 25 Cesare Colombo, ed., Professione Fotoreporter (Milan: Baldini, 1983), p. 15.

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as a pastime. Rather they served an apprenticeship starting as an office boy sweeping floors and delivering parcels, eventually becoming expert technicians proficient in optical and chemical processes. The creativity of these photographers was practical rather than theoretical or intellectual. Their concern was not so much the aesthetic solution or stylistic experimentation, as the need to produce interesting and attractive photographs for the papers. This alone was the ultimate goal of their daily activity. During the regime, propaganda photographers were instructed not to inform but to move the readers, as unlike drawings, photography was considered to exercise a fascination on the reader that was similar to that of the cinema. In photographs, Mussolini seemed real and for this reason they facilitated identification with him. Photographs, as well as being the product of an almost craft-like procedure, had to be full of expression, and since a ‘photograph is not an accident but a concept’, photojournalists had to think rationally, in order to quickly make decisions and ‘create’ the ideal image.26 As photographs potentially exist before the moment of exposure of the negative, photographers needed to pre-visualise planned images quickly, often when carrying photographic equipment while being exposed to the same risks faced by regular journalists. The creative skills of photojournalists relied on quick and clever practical choices for logistic solutions in order to overcome difficulties and adversities when taking photographs. ‘Brazen, doggedly patient, always climbing and scrambling everywhere’,27 the photographers, nicknamed ‘scattini’,28 had to face the defensive barriers of those in power, who, with the help of a tight network of policemen, bodyguards, secretaries, butlers, porters and so on, were regulating their exposure. The practicalities of the profession were constantly modified by technology which made a vast impact on the photographers’ working practices and resulting images. It would be reductive, therefore, to consider the activity of the photographic agency as purely financial. Rather than being a sterile speculative activity, agencies were run by men with knowledge

26 Ansel Adams, ‘A Personal Credo’, American Annual of Photography, 58 (1944), pp. 7–16 in Photographers on Photography, ed. by Nathan Lyons (London: Prentice-Hall International, 1966), p. 30. 27 Scattini is a composite word from ‘scatto’ (to release the shutter) and ‘scattare’ (to sprint off), in Cesare Colombo, Professione Fotoreporter, p. 15. 28 Chessa, Dux, p. 32.

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and sensitivity towards the medium, who also had entrepreneurial skills and a practical approach.

Photo Agencies Photographic agencies during the interwar period survived and made a profit by adjusting the selection of their products to the requirements of their customers. In the specific case of the publishing industry controlled by the state, these were the Fascist officials and Mussolini. The agencies influenced the production and the working methods of their photographers, pressing them to take photographs that were acceptable to Mussolini and therefore appealing to most newspapers. To sell images and keep the business going the agencies conditioned the conduct of the photojournalist since working with an agency meant following company policy.29 Situated within this logic, Mussolini was conceived as a new commodity in Italian politics, a product to be sold. He was not though the only target for photographers. From America the emerging taste for eye-catching pictures, increasingly appeared in tabloid newspapers featuring images of public figures contemporary to the Duce such as the king, his wife Maria Josè, his son Umberto, or the couple Edda and Galeazzo Ciano, the Duce’s daughter and son-in-law, who were also targets of a developing celebrity culture.30 Content analysis became important as the Italian press increasingly specialised. To avoid saturation and treatment of the same content, Mussolini was illustrated and presented through carefully selected images, which were conditioned by a hierarchy of importance in the lay-out, and diversified through differing representations. The same image of the Duce could be manipulated according to its destination, for example, it would appear in the press for the elite, which focused on politics and culture, in one form, while in the popular press his image might appear next to sport, entertainment, and gossip columns, and on occasion, even close to advertisements (Fig. 6.3).31

29 Forgacs, ‘How Exceptional’, in Culture, Censorship, p. 11. 30 Marien, Photography, p. 237. 31 Giovanni Gozzini, Storia del giornalismo (Milan: Mondadori, 2000), p. 136.

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Fig. 6.3 This page from La Domenica del Corriere shows images of Mussolini taken during the Battle for Grain in 1935 on the same page as advertisements for medicines and toothpaste as well as educational courses. La Domenica del Corriere, 7 July 1935 (n. xxxvii at top left of page can be misleading as both newspaper library and a newsreel from Luce catalogued this page as 7 July 1935)

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Although the adoption of technology at times was slow with cumbersome equipment, and resources were to be used cautiously, photojournalists often took a number of photographs in a short space of time from which one particular shot was chosen. In this role, photojournalists can be considered as active ‘constructors of nation and society, and as managers of the symbolic arena’.32 The notion that photographs were somehow ‘less ideological’, and could inform the readers more objectively, assured the pervasive role of photographic communication. The action of reading, Forgacs observes, is the decoding of many kinds of printed artefacts, not only books, but also ‘illustrated magazines, comics, advertising posters, and product labels with a high ratio of image to text’.33 Enjoying a loyal and habitual readership, the various projections that formed the fragmented dictator’s image were recomposed through regular consumption of the same newspaper or magazine. A specific image would circulate, passed from hand to hand, or simply be looked at, and thus interiorised by different sections of society to produce a unified effect in the symbolic arena. Whether sporty, dapper or conventional, a seemingly different inter-changeable photographic projection of the Duce could not only create shared values but also reinforce uniformity and compliance. In the process of fostering Mussolini’s myth, the Fascist state interfered by both repressing and enabling.34 On the one hand, the regime would control propaganda directly by prohibiting certain representations of the Duce, while on the other it allowed and supported private, profit-driven enterprises to promote his image. Photographic agencies and photojournalists constantly worked with reference to Fascist propaganda, principally directed by the State Press Office, the news agency Stefani and newspaper editors. There were various photography agencies including Bruni, Del Papa, Salvatori,35 although, for the purpose of this analysis I will examine the photojournalists who founded two of the most successful photographic agencies, Adolfo Porry Pastorel (Vedo 1908) in Rome and 32 David Levi Strauss, Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2005), p. 15. 33 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, ‘Patterns of Consumption’, in Mass Culture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), p. 37. 34 Ibid., p. 202. 35 Mignemi, ‘La costruzione degli strumenti di propaganda’, in L’Italia s’è desta! Propa-

ganda politica e mezzi di comunicazione di massa tra fascismo e democrazia, ed. by Mignemi (Turin: Gruppo Abele, 1996), p. 32.

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Vincenzo Carrese (Publifoto 1934) in Milan. The activity of these photojournalists during the regime will be considered in relation to the press and Fascist state policy.

Adolfo Porry Pastorel (VEDO) Although an important and prolific photojournalist, who worked from the early years of the century until the Fifties, Adolfo Porry Pastorel has not received the attention that his work deserves. His professional development is emblematic of the period and has been emulated by many other Italian photojournalists, since he is regarded as having laid the foundations of the profession. Until recently, when mentioned in literature, it was often only briefly and, except for two pamphlets dedicated to him, now out of print, there is no academic analysis of his working process and photographs. Published a few years ago, an illustrated biography presents interesting previously unpublished material from family archives,36 describing Porry Pastorel as being particularly well regarded, and making reference to his original character supported by anecdotes from his extraordinary career.37 He photographed Mussolini over a period of twenty-five years.38 Evidence that Porry Pastorel’s work was representative of a new style of journalism was confirmed by the fact that the Istituto Luce bought 20,000 of his negatives in 1927. The current Istituto Luce archives hold 1659 negatives that cover the years between 1919 and 1923, including important images of the March on Rome and the subsequent appointment of Mussolini as prime minister. In 1924, Porry Pastorel was commissioned by Matteotti’s widow Velia to document

36 Enriched with unedited material from his private family archive and the Farabola Archives, the illustrated biography of Porry Pastorel’s life and activity is by Vania Colasanti, Scatto Matto, la stravagante vita di Adolfo Porry-Pastorel, il padre dei fotoreporter italiani (Venice: Marsilio, 2013). 37 In 2008, a meeting in Castel San Pietro Romano with Tita Di Domenicantonio, a friend of Porry Pastorel and author of a booklet, now out of print, was particularly useful for gaining information about his life and some revealing anecdotes concerning his professional career. 38 Alessandra Quattordio, Adolfo Porry Pastorel fotografo: i bambini del fascismo (Milan: Galleria del Levante, 1980); Di Domenicantonio, Adolfo Porry Pastorel (1988); Castel San Pietro Romano is a village in the province of Rome, located about 42 km east of Rome where Porry Pastorel lived and for a period was mayor.

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the investigation around her husband’s disappearance and the subsequent developments.39 These images can be seen in Fondazione Turati, although the fate of the original negatives has yet to be established.40 Many queries regarding the location of negatives in general are extremely difficult to resolve as archives, such as Luce, are still in the process of cataloguing. Despite his seemingly foreign surname, Porry Pastorel was born in Vittorio Veneto (Treviso) in 1888,41 the son of an Italian army officer. After he lost his father when only twelve, he was supported by his godfather, the journalist Ottorino Raimondi, who introduced him to the world of the press. As editor of Il Messaggero, Raimondi hired Porry Pastorel as a reporter. He began his profession with a hands-on approach; enterprise, quick thinking and personal initiative were essential requirements. His status as the inventor of Italian photojournalism was aided by his arriving on the scene at the right time. His style was favoured by the burgeoning illustrated press, the changes that had occurred as a result of the First World War and the requirements of the regime. Trends in popular taste, linked to and in many ways shaped by official discourse, established the parameters of new journalistic thinking which was reflected in Porry Pastorel’s work. Before the war he was sent to Germany to learn zincography, part of the photoengraving process, a fact in itself that demonstrates not only the more advanced technology and expertise of the German press at the time, but also the need and desire of Italian journalism to emancipate itself from established practices. In 1908, Porry Pastorel published his first photographic reportages in the daily La Vita, and then for Il Giornale d’Italia. This marked the beginning of a

39 Archivio Matteotti, Fondazione di Studi Storici ‘Filippo Turati’ in Florence. In April 2004 an exhibition ‘Giacomo Matteotti—Storia e Memoria’ was held in Florence with previously unpublished material and photographs from the private collection of Matteotti’s widow. 40 Images commissioned by Velia, widow of Matteotti, can also be seen in the volume Stefano Caretti, Il delitto Matteotti storia e memoria (Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2004). The author confirmed the images from the case published in the volume were taken by Porry Pastorel. 41 Adolfo Porry Pastorel’s birth certificate, which I have a copy of, certifies Vittorio Veneto as his place of birth and not Rome as in most biographical notes.

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very successful career culminating in him forming his own photographic agency, V.E.D.O.42 founded in 1908 in Rome.43 Over the fifty years of his career, Porry Pastorel successfully published many photoreportages, although for the purpose of this analysis only the photographs he took of Mussolini will be considered.44 His famous photograph of Mussolini’s arrest in 1915, analysed in detail in chapter nine, demonstrates his particular skills. In a matter of seconds, he must have chosen to position himself in relation to the action so that he could best take advantage of the imminent photojournalistic event knowing the characteristics needed for a photograph to be published.45 Anticipating the photographic style of Felix Man’s reportage of Mussolini and influenced by the trend of the American journalism of the time, Porry Pastorel immortalised a surprised and shocked Mussolini who became the focus of a seemingly genuine un-staged photographic event. Porry Pastorel became known for beating other photographers to the scene, for example, capturing victims of murder, or Vittorio Emanuele Orlando in tears at the Peace Conference in 1919, or, on one occasion, the king in pyjamas.46 His social and professional connections gave him access to the corridors of power, where his familiarity with the surroundings permitted him to make photographs of an apparently spontaneous nature. As the use of images grew more widespread, there was a growing demand from the press which resulted in photographers competing against each other in seeking to take original shots and even invading the privacy of public figures, who in turn would manage events so that they could present to the cameras aspects that would promote their status.47

42 Acronym of Visioni Editoriali Diffuse Ovunque. 43 Tita Di Domenicantonio, Adolfo Porry Pastorel. Un fotoreporter leggendario (Palest-

rina: Circolo Culturale Prenestino Simeoni, 1988), pp. 13–16. 44 Interview with Mario Tursi, March 2008, Rome: Adolfo Porry Pastorel’s only son, Alberto, was a talented photographer, who during the war was sent by Luce to cover the Russian front from where he never returned. 45 Bertelli, ‘La fedeltà incostante’, in Storia d’Italia. Annali, ed. by Bertelli and Giulio Bollati, p. 132. In 1908 Porry Pastorel founded VEDO in via del Pozzetto, then in 1930 Via di Pietra, occupying three floors of the building, see Sergio Romano, Mussolini, (Milan: Longanesi, 2000), p. 179. 46 Romano, Mussolini, p. 180. 47 Marien, Photography, p. 167.

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This would on occasion result in mutually agreed photo opportunities.48 With Mussolini, the relationship was different and, rather than friendly, from what can be gathered, it seems to have been conflictual. Mussolini’s arrest in 1915 was the first of a long series of ‘impertinent’ and ‘irreverent’ shots that Porry Pastorel would take of the dictator throughout the Ventennio.49 The unconventional style he adopted to portray Mussolini won him the reputation of being a rebel photographer ‘who the Duce found challenging when photographed in unexpected poses which, worse still, he dared to publish!’.50 Porry, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, would go to any length to produce original pictures of the dictator that would appeal to the press. The intense rivalry between photographers, in particular with those from Luce, would push Porry Pastorel to stretch his imagination. It is said that the president of USA Woodrow Wilson recommended him for a remunerative position as a photo reporter in the USA, an offer which Porry Pastorel refused since he already had a monthly salary from Il Giornale d’Italia of sixteen thousand lire. At the time the editor’s salary was twelve thousand lire. It is curious that, even though his earnings were high, and his money well managed and reinvested in his agency, he sold the early part of his archive for two thousand lire, a comparatively small sum. When asking why this was, we cannot exclude the possibility of official pressure.51 In 1938, on the occasion of Hitler’s visit to Italy, Luce and press photographers were grouped together on board ship to record the event, but could not process their film before returning to land. Porry Pastorel, thinking ahead, had brought homing pigeons with him and used them to carry the film he had secretly developed directly to Rome. Thus his images were already published before the other photographers had even set foot on dry land. This and other episodes helped to create an aura around the photographer and fuelled a reputation for veiled irony towards the regime. More likely, Eileen Romano observes, rather than dissenting, 48 Before important or private meetings, it became common practice for the secretary to the prime minister Giovanni Giolitti to inform the press about photo opportunity, see also the anecdote about Giolitti and Pastorel in the introduction of this book. 49 Giuliana Scimé, Fotografia della libertà e delle dittature, da Sander a Cartier-Bresson 1922–1946 (Milan: Mazzotta, 1995), pp. 211–215. 50 Di Domenicantonio, Adolfo Porry Pastorel, p. 18. 51 Luca Criscenti, ‘La memoria in archivio’, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna

and others, p. 307.

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Porry Pastorel understood the commercial value of unconventional and informal images.52 Nevertheless, it should be taken into consideration that all images, including those by Porry Pastorel, would have been authorised before publication. Porry Pastorel’s images of Mussolini in the ‘Taken Unawares’ style such as (Fig. 6.4), implied a sense of the public’s right to view behind the scenes. Readers delighted in the ‘candid photography’ style and appreciated the use of photography which showed what normally could not be seen.53 In the early 1920s ‘candid’ photography already existed and it evolved into what could be termed ‘thinking in pictures’ journalism.54 This was before the Fascist government extended the political use and control of photography. Progressively the regime appropriated photojournalism for certain uses but still had to consider the commercial interests of the publishing industry. Preferring the greater detail when using larger format cameras, such as 9 × 12 cm Palmos or Ernemann, rather than smaller format cameras, Porry Pastorel took many images recording street life in a casual style associated with the snapshot. To illustrate his modus operandi, ‘paparazzo’ Mario Tursi, who worked for him, reported that at the time, Italian photojournalists were few and Porry Pastorel was considered novel and experimental. The technical aspects of being a photo reporter, especially with the cameras he used, required the ability to compose the subject matter succinctly. Porry Pastorel, knowing the complexity of the argument to be represented in a limited number of shots, would choose and compose the necessary elements so that in his words ‘a photo should be able to replace a thousand word article’.55 As a press photographer he worked backwards from the final product with various themes in his mind. One photograph of the Duce could serve different articles and publications.

52 Eileen Romano, ‘Il paparazzo del Duce’, in Mussolini, ed. by Romano, p. 179. 53 In 1899, the American Penny Pictorial Magazine started a feature called ‘Taken

Unawares’, which contained snapshots of famous people, in Marien, Photography, p. 237. 54 Marien, Photography, p. 236. 55 Interview with photojournalist Mario Tursi, March 2008, Rome: as well as the

photographer’s professional activity, Tursi told me about Porry Pastorel’s private life. After the war Porry Pastorel lived in Castel San Pietro near Rome with his wife, Franca Cerruti, where he was also mayor. He died in 1960.

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Fig. 6.4 Newsweek cover from 1939 of Mussolini at the end of the Stresa Conference (Lake Maggiore 11–14 April 1935)

‘Mussolini, dopo essere stato convocato nella capitale e ricevuto da Vittorio Emanuele III al Quirinale’ (Mussolini after being summoned to the capital to be received by Victor Emanuel III in the Quirinale) Rome 1922, is a case in point (Fig. 6.5). The Fascist hierarchy posing before the camera in Piazza del Popolo in Rome has Mussolini at the centre of the photographic space flanked

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Fig. 6.5 Mussolini in 1922 after his appointment as prime minister, by Porry Pastorel (Fototeca Gilardi)

by the quadrumvirate, the directors of the March on Rome, Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono, Cesare De Vecchi, Italo Balbo, plus Attilio Teruzzi. In this type of portrait, meaning is established ‘through strict codes of significance based on a traditional (military) hierarchy of rank and significance in a male world’.56 Emblematic of his ability to visually organise the composition of the scene, Porry Pastorel used the lens as a filter to create and capture an image that would work both in detail as in totality. Thus, this image of Mussolini in typical posture could also be cropped to show him or individual members of the quadrumvirate in isolation. This demonstrates that the photograph fulfils a basic rule of photojournalism, which is still relevant today, that although the result of an instant, the image is more effective when combining a number of distinct and complex expectations, allowing different viewers to identify with the content.57 Similar to images of high-ranking officers, Mussolini, in the middle of his uniformed associates, is identified as the symbol of

56 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 35. 57 Andrea Pogliano, Le immagini delle notizie. Sociologia del fotogiornalismo (Milan:

Unicopli, 2009), p. 52.

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a civilian leader, supported by a military code based on discipline, order, and intimidation. Typically, Porry Pastorel’s photograph summed up a series of dramatic events and represented them in a single fixed moment that had something of a visionary or even prophetic character. Although he took numerous formal images of the Duce, the photographer’s skill is most evident in his ability to humanise the dictator. Over a decade later Mussolini was photographed with Italo Balbo, one of the most powerful and popular of the Fascist hierarchs, and other Fascist officials, including the Secretary of the National Fascist Party Achille Starace, in a series of images where no one seems to pose, one of which was published in Illustrazione Italiana.58 Below is an image of Balbo’s return to Italy taken on 12 August 1933, this cropped print shows the main subjects radiating a relaxed spontaneity. The image has been subtly composed with Mussolini at the centre of a group, together making an image seemingly more intimate as they both looked directly at the camera communicating cohesion and shared success (Fig. 6.6). The illustrated press formed the principal conduit for the diffusion of the Duce’s image, becoming a profitable market for pioneering photojournalists like Porry Pastorel. His images of the Duce were able to supply not only the ‘omnivorous needs of the press’,59 but were capable of proposing a symbolic representation of the leader. His journalistic style was purposefully designed to convey the contemporary and emotional relevance of Fascism and its leader. Porry Pastorel’s representation of Mussolini was tinted with an extreme optimism which ‘often signalled complacent sensationalism rather than calls for revolution’,60 where the transformative potential of the print was ultimately defined by market guidelines.61 Always conscious of its lowly status as a visual art, photography was gaining importance thanks to the ‘development of a public sphere that relied on modern technologies’. Within the system of mediation and reproducibility, the agents and photojournalists were the

58 L’illustrazione Italiana, year LX, n 34, 20 August 1933. 59 Matthew S. Witkovsky, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945 (London:

Thames & Hudson, 2007), p. 97. 60 Ibid., p. 144. 61 Ibid., p. 91.

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Fig. 6.6 Mussolini with Air Marshal Italo Balbo upon his return from leading the Italian air armada in an historic flight from Italy to Chicago in 1933

‘anonymous people who pursued their interests according to game-like rules and shared codes of communication’.62

Vincenzo Carrese (Publifoto) Carrese (1910–1981), initially a journalist, then selling photographs, and newspaper picture editor, he became in 1936 the founder and director of his own photographic agency, Publifoto, in Milan, the most important

62 Koepnick, Lutz, ‘Face/Off’, in Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany: Text as Spectacle, ed. by Gail Finney (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 221.

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agency in Italy at the time which, according to Cesare Colombo, also became an influential school for Italian photojournalists.63 Neapolitan by birth, Carrese moved in 1927, at the age of seventeen, to Milan.64 He was a dynamic and enterprising photographic agent, very able to tackle all logistical issues, and with a strong sense of an opportunity for a scoop.65 Not a ‘proletarian’, in contrast to Colombo’s observation of the origin of photographers, as his father was a mathematics teacher and, more importantly, his uncle, Ferdinando D’Amora, was editor of La Domenica del Corriere, Carrese had an easy entry into the world of news photography. Initially, at nineteen, he was a distributor for World Photos, the photo-agency of the New York Times, where he grew gradually into his responsibilities, and, with the demand for images of Italy from abroad, he also represented the London Keystone Press Agency until 1934. Then the editor of Corriere della Sera, Aldo Borelli, invited him to run the entire photographic service of the newspaper. It is in this context, with the press working for and within the Fascist state to diversify the image of the Duce, that the role of a privately-run photography agency like Publifoto needs to be considered. His biographical notes, which his son Ferdinando corroborated in person,66 show no doubt about Carrese’s approach regarding the representation of Mussolini, the most important subject for his press agency. The owner of Publifoto (who, together with other photojournalists such as Fedele Toscani, father of Oliviero, photographed the dead body of Mussolini in Piazzale Loreto

63 Vincenzo Carrese directed different photo-agencies and in 1929 left World Wide Photos to start Keystone in Milan. In 1937 he changed the name from Keystone, considered too English and Jewish, to Publifoto, in Giovanna Calvenzi, ‘Vincenzo Carrese una biografia’, in Professione fotoreporter. L’Italia dal 1934 al 1970 nelle immagini della Publifoto di Vincenzo Carrese (Milan: Massimo Baldini, 1983), pp. 19 and 20. 64 Vincenzo Carrese was born in Castellamare di Stabia (Napoli) on 20 March 1910. 65 Calvenzi, ‘Vincenzo Carrese’, p. 22. 66 Vincenzo Carrese was the Italian representative of the Wide World Photos and of the New York Times photo agency since 1927, and since 1929 of the English Keystone. Some years earlier he directed the photo department of Corriere della Sera, then forming his own company Photo Agency Keystone of Carrese Vincenzo, which became Publifoto. Through this competitive and enterprising agency, Carrese was able to document all types of events, being one of the first to provide news, sports and current affairs images for publication. Publifoto continued successfully after the Second World War and still has an accessible archive, Archivio Storico Intesa San Paolo.

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Fig. 6.7 A print of the monumental installation of a two-tone portrait based on a photograph of Mussolini, erected in front of the facade of the cathedral in Milan, 1933. The image was also reproduced in the press, for instance in Rivista Illustrata del “Popolo d’Italia”, 13 November 1933 (SZ/Photo/Scherl/Bridgeman Images)

in 1945) stated that life during the regime was not that difficult for photojournalists so long as they photographed the Duce and the gerarchi only in martial poses, and avoided negative images: ‘no shots of the Duce and senior officials except in martial poses, no misery, no unemployment. Strikes? Who ever heard them mentioned? No suicides, no robberies, above all no antifascism’.67 In a well-known photograph from 1933 by Carrese (Fig. 6.7), the Duomo in Milan is seen after being prepared for a rally for the popular 67 ‘Quarant’anni della Publifoto’, Popular Photography Italiana, 127 (1968), p. 20, in Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 82; Maurizio Gariboldi, ed., Tino Petrelli. Storie per immagini, immagini di storie (Parma: Tip.Le.Co., 1992), p. 200.

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after-work organisation in the presence of Achille Starace. In the middle of the west-front of the cathedral a colossal, spectral image of Mussolini’s face was erected almost reaching the highest window.68 The thirty-metre high installation, a square-edged black-and-white portrait of Mussolini,69 effectively an enlargement from a photograph, was an example of what the founder of the fortnightly periodical based Critica fascista and minister of education Giuseppe Bottai described at the time as ‘itinerant monuments of bad taste’, also defined by the contemporary historian Laura Malvano as the ‘ephemeral image’ of Fascist culture.70 The image was black and white and recreated, according to Carlo Bertelli, ‘a singular graphic effect, as if you had in front of you an enlargement from a newspaper’.71 Parallel to the progressive monumental representation of the Duce realised by Luce from the mid-Thirties, press photographs of this type offered an alternative model of representation. Apart from the often slow Luce service, a newspaper like Corriere della Sera would use private agencies such as Publifoto that were not only more able to deliver according to newspapers deadlines but also could offer a product that reflected their editorial position, allowing the newspaper a semblance of ‘control’. The vast majority of Publifoto’s production was destined for the press, principally for Corriere della Sera, or the Fascist mouthpiece Il Popolo d’Italia, but also and perhaps even more for La Domenica del Corriere and L’Illustrazione Italiana, La Gazzetta dello Sport and for the illustrated press in general. Another consistent portion of their work was publicity for commerce and industry. Brochures, catalogues, photographic services for recreational and cultural or sport activities, were also important as they provided a regular form of income.72 The range of assignments was

68 This portrait of the Duce of gigantic proportions was originally created from a photograph and used in various formats and mounted in many different ways from postcards to a 1 cm. letter seal, in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 18. 69 Nanni Baltzer, ‘The Duce in the Street: Illumination in Fascism’, in Kirill Postoutenko, Totalitarian Communication: Hierarchies, Codes and Messages (Bielefeld: transcript, 2010), pp. 125–156. 70 Laura Malvano, Fascismo e politica dell’immagine (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1988), pp. 25 and 38. 71 Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 82. 72 Gariboldi, Tino Petrelli, p. 200.

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varied, with photographs being taken for a precise purpose. A photographer trained at Publifoto was more artisan than artist. Having a practical approach, the photographer would not ‘take’ but ‘make’ photographs, knowing how to reproduce exactly the iconographical canons imposed by the agency. Fedele Toscani recalled that, while on assignment for the agency ‘I used to go around taking photographs for the crime pages of the Corriere della Sera and often also for Il Popolo d’Italia. The event was the same, the protagonists also, and I would take one shot in the Corriere style, then step back a pace, down on one knee and shoot another in the style of Il Popolo d’Italia’.73 As negatives were pre-mounted in a limited number of chassis, correspondingly the number of plates that could be exposed for each event was limited. In addition, the use of large format required individual developing, possible retouches, a fast drying process and immediate printing. Carrese, in the interest of having images in focus and relevant, would instruct ‘his’ photographers what to take and when, limiting their initiative to technical issues complicated by the limits their cameras imposed. Similar to the Luce operating instructions, photographers of Publifoto were not to use the more modern Leica or Rolleiflex, considered less reliable, but rather Palmas, Contessa Nettel and Bectar, which, besides being heavy and bulky (inclusive of containers the equipment could weigh up to 12 kg.) allowed the photographers to take only a limited number of shots. As Cesare Colombo notes, the extreme simplified composition was due to technical rather than formal reasons. Together with intuition, courage and quick reflexes were essential skills for a photographer working for Publifoto.74 As raw materials were scarce, Carrese only allowed a very limited number of chassis per photographer, thus photographic language aimed to include as much as possible with minimal exposures, in practice adopting the boss’s credo: ‘don’t invent anything, don’t do it your own way; bring back as much as you can without overdoing it, get the right light, don’t forget the names, get them confirmed, and don’t forget the 73 Oreste Del Buono, ‘Dal Duce a Coppi nel clic di Toscani’, in La Stampa, 23 September 1995, in Francesco Giunta, ‘L’avventura di Vincenzo Carrese e di Publifoto’ (unpublished thesis on the History of Journalism, University of Genoa, BA Political Science, 2003), p. 40. 74 Cesare Colombo, ‘Il grande archivio’, in Fotografia e fotografi a Milano dall’Ottocento ad oggi, ed. by Anna Lisa Carlotti (Milan: Abitare Segesta, 2000), pp. 215–218.

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Fig. 6.8 Also by Carrese this photograph was taken during the Turin visit 14 May 1939

faces’.75 Instructions first approved by Mussolini, then the Ministry of Propaganda, the press agency Stefani and lastly Borelli would finally be communicated to Carrese who in turn instructed his team. According to Zannier, in addition to personalised direction, what helped create an accepted image of Mussolini was the photographers’ internalisation of the accepted iconographic canons, a kind of self-censorship that meant they were working towards an acceptable image. During an official visit to Turin in 1939, Carrese captured what may seem to be a spontaneous moment fixed in time ‘Mussolini among children’ (Fig. 6.8).

75 Colombo, ‘Il grande archivio’, in Professione fotoreporter. L’Italia dal 1934 al 1970 nelle immagini della Publifoto di Vincenzo Carrese (Milan: Massimo Baldini, 1983), pp. 13–17 (p. 13).

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Noting that the photographic image can be considered as a ‘sample taken from space’, Bertelli also believes it is realised according to preacquired spatial and aesthetic conventions. As much as a map conforms to pre-established conventions of what a map should look like, the conventional signs of representation in a photograph were decided a priori.76 This image by Carrese was the result of a considered process, where differing elements had to be taken into consideration, including light and positioning to emphasise the subject and exaggerate dramatic content. The line of composition and distribution of objects and figures is certainly anything but casual. In Western culture, for example, the progression of images from left to right indicates direction and progress; objects on high in the right-hand part of the frame have more weight than others while curvaceous and rounded shapes in general indicate femininity with upright and straight lines virility. Here, the image is dominated by the striding figure of Mussolini whose forward movement is mimicked and exaggerated by the officer behind him. His gloved right hand points to the centre of the composition drawing the eye down along the line made by the handles of the prams towards the delicate heads of the infants, then upwards to the grateful gaze of their mothers towards the subject Mussolini. The camera is held at head height bringing all the subjects’ eyes to the same level thus exaggerating the sense of perspective and depth. Much of the representational manner of the image of the Duce taken by Carrese and press photographers must be understood as being related to conscious or subconscious visual strategies in the collaborative efforts of the press, industry and politics working together to construct an ‘emotional language’. Although press photography was the work of photographers, the output was considered to be the property of the paper. Images were routinely cropped, retouched and sequenced without the photographer’s prior knowledge or permission.77 As much as photographers cannot be deemed responsible for the improper use of their photos, the press-photographers following Mussolini were presumably aware of the purpose of their work, that was the construction and celebration of a

76 Bertelli and Bollati, ‘Ancora il Luce’, in Storia d’Italia, ed. by Bertelli and Bollati, p. 132. 77 Marien, Photography, p. 167.

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myth.78 A widely published Publifoto series of the Duce’s visit to Turin in 1939 can be considered exemplary of the imagery that fed the visual rhetoric in support of the Duce’s cult (Fig. 6.9). In ‘Mussolini tiene un discorso a Torino’ (Mussolini speaking in Turin) 14 May 1939, taken by Carrese, the emotional and political plotting characteristic of his style speaks volumes about the press photographs’ contribution to the cult of the Duce. The series consisted mainly of long shots of the dictator speaking to the crowd from a temporary structure, in the shape of an eagle, erected especially for the occasion. On top can be read the dedication: ‘Turin fortress of the Fascist revolution salutes you Benito Mussolini the peoples’ Leader and founder of the Empire’. The privileged viewpoint of the press-photographer is evident in the visual strategy of this series where the viewer was intended to ‘respond accordingly in terms of an appropriate emotional register’.79 There was extensive use of bottom-up portraits, and symmetric lines, with compact composition where, for example, the Duce in dark uniform and a matching hat, ideally suited for black and white photography, seemed to be consistently surrounded by the cheering crowd. Used as political registers, these visual strategies constructed an image within a highly charged and controlled photographic space.80

Tino Petrelli Tino Petrelli a well-known photographer working for Carrese, and one of the ‘proletarian’ photographers as described by Colombo, commented with hindsight in 1989, that they, the press-photographers, had learned what was right or not when photographing the Duce’s posture and expressions.81 Defined by Giuliana Scimè as ‘the jewel in the crown of Publifoto’,82 Petrelli was born in 1922 near Pordenone, moving at twelve to Milan where at only fifteen, started to work for Carrese as an office boy. After only one year’s training, he was sent in 1938 to the Nations Grand Prix at San Siro racecourse where he took a photograph that showed 78 Fadigati, Il mestiere di vedere, p. 54. 79 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 150. 80 Ibid., p. 151. 81 Carlotti, Fotografia e fotografi, p. 82. 82 Scimé, Fotografia della libertà, p. 284.

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Fig. 6.9 ‘Mussolini speaking in Turin’, here published in L’Illustrazione Italiana 21 May 1939, was taken by Carrese during a speech in Turin, 14 May 1939

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the winning horse as its muzzle crossed the finishing line. The photograph published the following day across three columns of the Corriere della Sera front page secured his future as a photojournalist. Indeed, he worked until the 1980s. Highly regarded by Carrese, Petrelli commented that during Fascism ‘photographs with inappropriate pose or expression were immediately discarded. They were not destroyed but simply they could not be published in newspapers’,83 and thus, according to this testimony, as long as the dictator was portrayed in a martial pose, photographs were accepted by newspapers. It is important to exercise a measure of caution when interpreting testimonies given many years after the event. Nevertheless, where credible, they would confirm the need for exercising self-censorship that can be deduced from a comparative reading of the instructions and photographs reproduced in the press and, equally importantly, those that were rejected. Apart from the obvious expressions, such as yawning and blinking, or an image out of focus or confused, some negatives were rejected for reasons difficult to identify, and which remain a matter of speculation.84 Since intentional vagueness was very much part of propaganda strategy, the precise meaning of the Duce’s expression ‘not appropriate’ remains uncertain, although we can identify a generic criterion predominant in portraying the Duce ‘in a dignified way’.85

Censorship Censorship was also imposed by local authorities, as Petrelli recalled: ‘before delivering film and prints to the newspapers, you went to the Prefettura (Prefecture) where a press office manager selected, gave the okay, and stamped the photograph’.86 As well as the underlying threat of physical violence, confinement, imprisonment and/or closure of an activity, the regime interfered with the various entities in charge of cultural

83 Maurizio Gariboldi, ed., ‘Fascismo e Fotografia’, in Tino Petrelli. Storie per immagini di storia (Parma: Tip.Le.Co, 1992), p. 200. 84 Franzinelli and Marino, Il Duce proibito. 85 Gaetano Polverelli, the head of Mussolini’s press office, established the canons of the

dictator’s photographic representation producing a large number of instructions (many originating directly from Mussolini) one of which was: ‘newspapers are recommended to carefully choose photographs of the Duce and only publish those which show him in a dignified manner’ (4 April 1932), in Franzinelli and Marino, Il Duce proibito, p. xvi. 86 Gariboldi, Tino Petrelli, p. 200.

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activities using differing forms of control. On a regular basis, instructions (‘note di servizio’) were issued by the Ministry of Interior, the Cabinet Press Office, from 1933 the Undersecretary of State for Press and Propaganda, and finally from 1937 the Ministry of Popular Culture. These instructions were sent as a preventive form of control to the editors of newspapers, with some of them specifically referring to the content of the photographic image of the Duce. By consulting a compendium of four main collections of these ‘note di servizio’ published after 1945, of which the most complete was edited by Claudio Matteini,87 it is possible to identify several instructions relative to the photographic representation of Mussolini. Part of the ‘note di servizio’ were compared by Angelo Schwarz with a sample of newspapers taken at random and published between 1939 and 1943 to determine the extent they had been followed by the press. From these four collections, only those that concern photography are here selected and out of 92 newspapers, 26 had some images corresponding to the instructions received.88 Other documents held in the historical archive of Corriere della Sera that refer to instructions sent from director Borelli to his staff contribute to the analysis of state interference with the image of the Duce.89 Some of the ‘note di servizio’ examined by Schwarz testify to the regime’s aim of prohibiting the publication of images reputed obscene or against Fascist values such as ‘photographs of naked women’ or ‘thin women’, or ‘photographs that don’t give a good impression of order, activity, or traffic’. The four collections of ‘note di servizio’ and the instructions addressed by Borelli to his staff reveal that very few that were specifically concerned with the image of the Duce, and, when they were, it was in generic terms. For example, in 1933 some of this documentation concerned two drawings appearing in Corriere della Sera and Il Mattino representing the Duce that ‘he liked one, and not the other’. This followed a warning that drawings had to be shown, like photographs,

87 Claudio Matteini, Ordini alla stampa (Rome: Editrice Polilibraria Italiana, 1945), in Adolfo Mignemi, L’Italia s’è desta! Propaganda politica e mezzi di comunicazione di massa tra fascismo e democrazia, ed. by Mignemi (Turin: Gruppo Abele, 1996), pp. 60–74. 88 Angelo Schwarz, ‘Fotografia del Duce possibilmente con l’elmetto’, in L’Italia s’è desta!, pp. 60–74. 89 Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera, f. 157C, Aldo Borelli Direttore/Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera, f. 727C, Carteggio personaggi (società o enti), 06.09.1936– 12.04.1945, oggetto: Ministero della Cultura Popolare.

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prior to publication, to the Government Press Office. Likewise in 1938 instructions issued to newspapers said that it was not allowed to publish photographs ‘of the king and the Duce greeting each other at the Termini station’, or another ‘in which the Duce is shown with some monks’, and that all papers must publish a specific photograph with the caption, ‘the Duce prepares to climb onto the combine harvester’, and absolutely no unauthorised images.90 The ‘note di servizio’ therefore were more about place, situation, or the quality of images. A recurrent recommendation was, for instance, that the photographs had to be ‘in focus’. None seemed to direct the press with precise stylistic indications of how the Duce needed to be photographed, or to instruct the photographers to portray him in a specific posture, expression, or from a particular angle. Only one more precise instruction was issued on 27 October 1943 when newspaper editors were ordered to show photographs with the Duce ‘possibly with a helmet’ (Fig. 6.10).91

90 Schwarz, ‘Fotografia del Duce’, in L’Italia s’è desta!, p. 63. 91 Ibid., p. 74.

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Fig. 6.10 This postcard illustrates una disposizione of 27 October 1943 to reproduce Mussolini “possibly wearing a helmet”

CHAPTER 7

The Aesthetic Image: Ghitta Carell

The Studio Photographer While press photographers were responsible for the large part of the Duce’s visibility, his highly staged and doctored photo-portraits, although limited in number, made a significant contribution in magnifying his photogenic charisma. In the studio, as if in a scenography workshop, the studio photographer would adjust an eye-lid, brighten up a spent colour, highlight the pattern of cloth or hide a wrinkle, to create an idealised appearance of the Duce, thus complementing or accentuating the psychology of the subject, and often creating a film star appeal. Through the clever interplay of light and skilful retouching, Mussolini’s profile, three-quarter and full-face views were offered to the public filtered through the creative eye of studio photographers, the image-makers of the Duce. Anything can become a myth, as Roland Barthes once pointed out, provided it is conveyed by a discourse.1 The myth, Barthes continued, is a system of communication that is a message, and for it to become a language, special conditions are necessary. According to this logic, the mythical qualities of Mussolini’s portraits were not defined by the content of the photograph alone but by the ‘way in which it uttered this message’.2 In other words, the image of the dictator became a type of 1 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, selected and trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 109. 2 Ibid., p. 109.

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speech or a visual myth. Since, to interpret the message, it was necessary to be familiar with the dominant cultural codes, the image itself acted as a reinforcement of the spoken message rather than as an independent source.3 Within the cultural and political frame of the regime, the potent visual rhetoric expressed in Mussolini’s portraits amplified his message, with photographers functioning as both catalysers and exploiters of a new image consciousness. In a regime where blatant propaganda was routine, the dividing line between information and entertainment became blurred.4 The producers of the Duce’s image embraced the language of theatre and cinema, producing a glorified vision of unrestrained physical presence where Mussolini appeared powerful yet distant.5 Unlike drawing and painting, photography, with its assumed inherent veracity, exerted various kinds of seduction similar to cinema where the subject was perceived as real. Therefore the transfer of identification from image to viewer was facilitated.6 Like the political advisors who handle the image of politicians nowadays, studio photographers played a key role in promoting the cult of personality of the leader. However, these photographers were not directly involved in decision-making, nor were they invited to advise how to perfect Mussolini’s image. Considering that no explicit direction or written instructions are evident, it must be asked by what canons and according to what purpose did studio photographers construct the image of the Duce. As part of the production and organisation of propaganda, the idealised style of studio photographers was much appreciated by high society and Fascist officials alike.7 One of these studio photographers, despite being successful at the time, has not received the attention her work deserves, nor has the 3 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion, 2001), p. 48. 4 Kiku Adatto, Picture Perfect: Life in the Age of the Photo-Op (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 19. 5 Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 154. 6 Anna Lisa Carlotti, ed., Fotografia e fotografi a Milano dall’Ottocento ad oggi (Milan: Abitare Segesta, 2000), p. 149. 7 Among the many independent studio photographers the most prominent were: Attilio Badodi, Eva Barrett, Bruni, Mario Castagneri, Ernesto Fazioli, Amerigo Petitti, Eugenio Risi, Ernesto Richter, Mario Nunes Vais, Emilio Sommariva, Vasari, Carlo Wulz and Alfredo Zoli.

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extent of her contribution to the construction of the Duce’s myth been evaluated.

Ghitta Carell Ghitta Carell was one of a handful of studio photographers working in Rome in the 1930s and was sought out by everyone who was anyone. To be photographed by Carell had the same prestige as being portrayed by a fashionable society painter, and the most celebrated and prominent members of the nobility, industry, finance, politicians and Fascist officials all sat for a portrait by her. To the long list of high-ranking regime officials, royalty and clergy that featured among her clients, including Starace, the king and the Pope, one can add the names of many actors, actresses, writers, artists and poets. What is striking, given her role, is that Carell was in almost every respect an outsider. She was a Hungarian woman of Jewish background with few social entrées and no obvious political connections. It is therefore worth considering how she came to occupy the place she did. Accidents of biography and some luck played their part, but, beyond these aspects, it is important also to explore her mastery of a form of elite representation that was fully accepted by the court and the regime as well other notable personalities of the time. Carell used her refined technique and expressive language to convey the air of distinction her sitters demanded. It should be borne in mind that the interwar years were the first period in which the photograph displaced the painted portrait as the primary medium of portraiture. Moreover, the social hierarchy had been modified under the regime such that senior Fascists, aviators, sportsmen and media figures as well as industrialists and their wives joined the royal family, the aristocracy and the state establishment at the apex. The conventional air of poise and ease that marked the work of international society painters like John Singer Sargent during the Belle Epoque was eclipsed by more dynamic values and the aura of glamour associated with cinema. Carell won prominence at this time of change, but there was a fragility in her position that manifested itself in a constant search for acceptance and official support. Carell’s photographs of the regime, and in particular of Mussolini, need to be considered as both separate from and complementary to Fascist aesthetics, while also adding to them. She was complicit with the cult of the Duce while revealing aspects of his personality that other

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photographers avoided or missed. After an analysis of Carell’s portraits of Mussolini, her modus operandi and techniques will be discussed. Mussolini frequently posed for artists and sculptors in the 1920s but did so rarely in the following decade. Nonetheless, for Carell, although already a successful photographer, to win definitive recognition she had to secure the patronage of the Duce. A key photographic session with Mussolini took place in 1933 at the Palazzo Venezia in the Sala del Mappamondo.8 Even if, in all probability, this was her first meeting in person with Mussolini, Carell could hardly have been unfamiliar with his face. The Duce was the most photographed man in Italy. The myth surrounding the dictator had been continually developed since the early Twenties and the frequent and various representations of his person, including his face, were pervasive. Thus, Carell found herself before an individual who had already been glorified and rendered iconic in a myriad of ways. Carell recognised that she needed to photograph the Duce to establish her credentials with the political elite. According to Eva Nodin, ‘a month after her arrival in Rome, Carell dispatched a card, addressed to Benito Mussolini personally, informing him that she had opened a Studio Fotografico in Rome, offering her services’.9 She quickly realised that without an ally she would have had little chance of success. As all communication with Mussolini went via his private secretary, Osvaldo Sebastiani, she struck up an insistent correspondence with him which resulted in her organising a sitting with the Duce.

8 Eva Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell. Women Photographers in Italy’, in Women Photographers European Experience, ed. by L. Johannesson and G. Knape (Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2003), p. 109. The lack of a significant body of original photographs and documentary void that encumbered the studies on the photographer begin now to include a larger quantity of period prints and other materials found in private collections, in antique markets and public collections. Recent scholarly works reject aesthetic and moral judgments to form a basis with a more extensive an accurate critical analysis of Carell’s work: Eva Nodin (2004), Norbert Orosz (2006), Alessandra Antola (2011). The biographical volume by Roberto Dulio (2013) Un ritratto mondano. Fotografie di Ghitta Carell reveals the art and life of the famous portraitist. 9 Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell’, in Women Photographers, p. 108.

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Man of Providence The resulting images are unusual in portraying Mussolini in civilian clothes (Fig. 7.1). These portraits of the dictator from waist up are different in being quite intimate and informal. Mussolini has put aside his usual military uniform and adopted, most probably at the suggestion of Carell, a double breasted light coloured jacket typical of the

Fig. 7.1 This is a mounted photograph from 1939 of Mussolini, one of three portraits taken by Ghitta Carell in 1933 (Roberto Dulio collection)

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designs he favoured, based on the classic English models. From the beginning of the Thirties Mussolini normally avoided official photo-portraits in civilian clothes, and there are very few photographs of this type. He probably realised that his persona as Duce was bound up with the particular uniforms and costumes that served to signal his unique status and multifaceted talents. The ‘Man of Providence’ and ‘the Prince of an Ancient Race’, as Mussolini had also been termed, were transformed by Carell from a glowering and rigid subject into a ‘docile’ model. In this instance, Mussolini temporarily suspended the sense of self he normally projected and allowed himself to interact directly with the photographer. The ability of Carell was shown in the way she gained the confidence of the dictator, inducing him to project a side of himself that he thought might be useful as an alternative persona. She detected this unspoken desire and took advantage of his vanity to make a very different portrait of the Fascist leader. Carell portrayed the Duce from the front, profile, three quarters, standing, sitting and looking down. Against the neutral background, the Duce was decontextualised to encourage the viewer to focus exclusively on his person, in particular his expression, posture and clothes. Mussolini is portrayed with folded arms, then with hands in pockets and finally resting his chin lightly on his hand, in a pensive attitude. Whether intentional or not, the image communicates the complete intellectual and psychological individual. According to informal portrait conventions, the head-on-hand pose with one elbow resting10 on a table and the hand propping up the face are intended to construct an image associated with the learned thinker. The representation of the man ‘who thought’ was aimed at conveying not so much social dominance or power, but a certain respect. Mussolini at the beginning of the Thirties needed to counteract the cliché of his threatening, surly image, which had spread via the foreign press throughout the world and Italy.11 The Duce’s expression softens progressively, transforming from harsh to more approachable. The serious scowl and protruding clenched jaw relax, at times his glance lowered and then with the beginnings of a smile. ‘The Leader of Fascism’ was committed to 10 Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660–2000 (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), p. 42. 11 Mimmo Franzinelli and Emanuele Valerio Marino, Il Duce proibito. Le fotografie di Mussolini che gli Italiani non hanno mai visto (Milano: Mondadori, 2003), p. xi.

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promoting an image half way between that of the English gentleman and ‘the Father of the Italian people’.12 There is a striking similarity between the clothes and attitude of Mussolini, when compared to a photograph taken at the end of the nineteenth century, with the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio who was his role model and later antagonist (Figs. 7.2 and 7.3). Carell, who by now was at the peak of her career in photography after a decade in Italy, had developed a distinctive style. The proficient use of light, the ability to make subjects feel at ease and the authority with which she directed even the most recalcitrant of sitters, enabled her to realise portraits with her undeniable aesthetic. Patiently, Carell trimmed up the dictator’s waist, masked the large cyst on his head that used to worry him so much, refined his nose, softened his jaw, smoothed the back of the hands and finally gave his complexion a healthy and younger glow. Carell arranged the photographs she took during the first sitting in 1933 into two albums. She intended to present them to Mussolini in person but, on the advice of Osvaldo Sebastiani, left them for approval.13 Some of these pictures were rejected and instructions negatives should be destroyed. This was confirmed by Sebastiani who also wrote that permission was granted to publish and sell the photographs Mussolini had approved. Being given the right to sell portraits of the Duce was valuable to Carell both in economic terms and in establishing the extra status she acquired. An idea of how much Carell could have earned from the reproduction of a portrait of Mussolini is shown by the considerable sum of five hundred lire she was paid for publication of another of her photographs.14 Carell subsequently wrote to Mussolini asking whether he would consider adding his autograph to one of the approved portraits, which he duly did. The style and manner of the letter Carell wrote shows her underlying loyalty and affection for Italy, which she called her second homeland. Her support for the regime and its leader were also expressed. Nodin implies that Carell probably had a genuine admiration for Mussolini which she ‘shared with millions of others’.15 Although other than the business letters, there is no documentary evidence that can testify either approval

12 Ibid., p. x. 13 Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell’, in Women Photographers, p. 120. 14 Enrico Maria Ricciuti, ‘La fotografa dei potenti’, Il Secolo XIX , 9 May 1970. 15 Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell’, in Women Photographers, p. 110.

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Fig. 7.2 Mussolini by Carell in 1933 resembles the portrait of D’Annunzio although it does not necessarily derive from it; both images probably rely on the typology of the thinker or the intellectual (Fototeca Gilardi)

or disapproval of Mussolini or Fascism, her actions were those of someone who accepted the regime as a given fact and who was happy to profit from it.

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Fig. 7.3 Gabriele d’Annunzio photographed by Mario de Maria, Venice circa 1918–1919 (Fondazione di Venezia)

Condottiero After the session of 1933, Carell continued to promote her professional services with Palazzo Venezia by her correspondence with Sebastiani and she successfully arranged a further sitting in November 1936, although in fact this only took place in April of the following year. Once Carell had completed her work on the plates, the printed photographs were again collected into a folder and sent for approval and selection, and one of

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them was returned with a signature ‘Mussolini Roma AXV’. This time the dictator, now jointly with the king a marshal of the newly proclaimed empire, was portrayed in a more rigid and conventional guise. Mussolini is wearing the full regalia of the military dictator, in service dress with decorations, black shirt and tie. The neutral background is entirely taken up by his figure portrayed from the hips upwards. The composition follows the pictorial convention of a slight ‘contrapposto’ or twisted torso posture (Fig. 7.4). His right hand is in his trouser pocket with the other resting in his lap, his torso at three quarters to the left with his head three quarters to the right and his eyes looking directly at the lens. The uniform exalts his robust but toned body resulting in the image of a leader in excellent physical form. Carell’s portrait of Mussolini communicates a ‘whole register of attributes, such as power, strength, imagination, creativity, and action that reinforces the myth of male dominance and individuality’.16 This impression is reinforced by medals, badges of rank, buckles and buttons. His head has been closely shaved and has a regular form giving the impression of being backlit to create an aura that emphasises the intensity of his stare, and the eyes of the dictator at the centre of the composition captivate attention. The portrait gives the impression of a leader who knows no doubt and feels no melancholy. Mussolini’s dark eyes staring fixedly at the viewer ‘suggest a parallel inner gaze which in turn reinforces the sense of singlemindedness’.17 It is the expression of the ‘Warrior’, ‘Military Leader’ and ‘Founder of the Empire’, a living reminder of the growing formal omnipotence of the Duce. The earlier unofficial portraits of Mussolini associated him with the intellectual, the reflective and the benevolent; this series showed the Duce in his military uniform projecting action, authority and aggression. The complex construction of values in Mussolini’s portraits illustrates the multifaceted identity he developed to engage with the Italians. If, in her first session with him, Carell absorbed Mussolini into an elite aesthetic that was unusual but not incompatible with his wider image, this time the photographer was contributing directly to the manufacture of the myth of Mussolini.

16 Graham Clarke, The Photograph, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 105. 17 Ibid., p. 105.

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Fig. 7.4 A later image by Carell of Mussolini from April 1937. This image was reproduced on differing photographic bases and in various publications. Note the retouching around the waist (Roberto Dulio collection)

Modern Allure With her meticulous attention to every detail, Carell used to establish the style, poses and accessories of her portraits. Immobility was essential

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to her photography, as she dwelt on ‘long moments and pauses’.18 This is evident in her work for the royals, which was staged and meticulously prepared. Graham Clarke argues that ‘the photograph is itself the product of a photographer. It is always the reflection of a specific point of view’. He goes on to stress that photography is an active process and Carell’s work conforms with his statement as in her photographs she ‘imposes, steals, re-creates the scene/seen according to a cultural discourse’.19 Much of Carell’s success was a consequence of her ability to manipulate the negative plates and knowing which details to change. In the darkroom she worked on the plates applying ‘touches of the pencil, erasing knife, the bold brush strokes used to cover the defects’ helping her subjects to lose ‘ten kilos in ten minutes’, making women appear more beautiful while accentuating men’s characters.20 The technique of retouching was used by professional photographers from the outset until at least the 1960s. Original negatives were reworked manually to cancel undesirable details and alter the negatives to achieve the desired final print. Bodies as well as faces could be reshaped. The reason for adjusting the negatives was not just personal vanity but to fulfil the ideals and expectations of the public. The efficacy of this flattering process can be seen as the practice spread to images of actors and actresses, who also needed photographs for personal publicity. Carell worked to commission providing mainly limited edition retouched prints for her clients. Mussolini personally ordered copies of prints some of which were signed and given or sent to notable individuals. They thus contributed to the circulation of the personalised images that characterised the dictator as the principal actor in the visual representation of Fascist power.21 Carell’s work helped consolidate the position of Mussolini through the circulation of his images in conjunction with those of the social elite. She stated that she intended to use photography as a medium to express psychological insight.22 Her subject, however, was flattered by 18 Carlo Bertelli, ‘La fedeltà incostante’ Schede per la fotografia nella storia d’Italia fino al 1945’, in Storia d’Italia, ed. by Bertelli and Bollati (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), p. 186. 19 Clarke, The Photograph, p. 29. 20 Adele Cambria, ‘Introduzione’, in Francesca Maria Occhipinti, Signori d’Italia nei

fotoritratti di Ghitta Carell (Milan: Longanesi, 1978), p. 2. 21 Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell’, in Women Photographers, p. 116. 22 Alexis Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs: Emotions for the People’, Contemporary

European History, 3, 13 (2004), p. 3.

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images that served to confirm his status as an important, if not the most important, personage of the age. Carell’s refined compositions expressed the need to construct stable values within a social hierarchy seeking stability. These are iconic images of a new ruling class frozen within a blind force opposed to change.23 Carell’s clients were fascinated by her idealised portraits, which may not have corresponded to a ‘Fascist’ style, but were certainly not in conflict with the regime’s aesthetics. In the representation of the urban ‘upper classes’ and especially women, Carell alludes to their sex appeal and creates an elegance with a refined sense of fashion. She accentuated physical beauty and celebrated the attributes of wealth. Broadly speaking, her work can be said to have provided the regime with a complementary aesthetic that served certain distinct purposes; it provided an air of openness and variety, not to say modernity and quasi-cinematic glamour, that was different from the usual range offered by the regime which went from avant-garde influenced imagery to the autarkic classical-inspired motifs preferred, for example, by many painters of the period. Although her photographs did not generally have a wide audience, they were published in periodicals such as Il Quadrante or L’Illustrazione Italiana. As historical documents, Carell’s photographs provide an insight into the aesthetic web that connected the Fascist elite and the established ruling class. Whether or not she personally sympathised with Fascism, her work contributed to the process of making Fascist aesthetics. Her mediations between traditional elite photography, Hungarian aesthetic traditions, modern iconography and cinematic glamour did not correspond either to the classical or to the avant-garde aesthetics that contradictorily flourished under the regime. What they offered was a modern allure that helped render an authoritarian system seductive.

Summary For over two decades in interwar Italy, anonymous photographs of the Duce were seen and absorbed by millions of people. These photographs also supported points in the accompanying text and thus operated as

23 Bertelli and Bollati, ‘Ancora il Luce’, in Storia d’Italia, ed. by Bertelli and Bollati, p. 186.

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evidence of an objective truth.24 Newspapers, magazines, flyers, banners on temporary structures, billboards, stamps, postcards, posters or labels all displayed photographs of Mussolini without credits as if the images viewers saw were part of a greater unfiltered reality where Mussolini’s personality seemed to be the driving force behind the images’ production. Any relation between the individual photographer and the mechanism, through which the images of the dictator were manufactured, was denied and strategically suppressed. Functioning as evidence to support the contention of his words, the ubiquitous and silent images of the dictator became part of a daily ritual forming a photographic education. Mussolini’s audiences were obsessively ‘informed’ about the actions of their Capo (boss) in the places and circumstances where he unfolded his political discourse. Following an inflexible routine, the Fascist calendar was punctuated by photographs portraying the same subject and actions in the same places, inaugurations, visits, trips, receptions, prizes and even events like the Befana fascista.25 Parliament, the Senate, Sala del Mappamondo (where Mussolini had his office) and mostly piazze.26 This apparent soliloquy of the Duce was in reality part of a system of communication where the authors of his images—mainly Luce, photojournalists and studio photographers—played a significant role in the construction of his myth. Despite the emphasis on photographers, the intention in this part was not to downplay the influence that Mussolini personally exercised over the cultural industries such as the press or the radio. Images of the Duce were not an extemporary necessity functional exclusively to the regime but also the result of an emerging image consciousness in politics, something that was just beginning at the time of Mussolini. Then photographs were meant to appeal to people’s sensitivity and were manipulated to strengthen realism, whereas today pleasure is derived from manipulated

24 Images as ‘objective quotes’ in David Levi Strauss, Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2005), pp. 16–17. 25 Epiphany Eve, the night of January 5, in a similar way to St Nicholas or Santa Claus, popularly called Befana (aka a sweet witch) this festivity was renamed as Fascist Befana when the regime took charge of distributing the gifts. 26 Luca Criscenti, ‘La memoria in archivio’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini (1900–1945), 3 vols, ed. by De Luna and others (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), p. 286.

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photographs where the image can lie, as digital technology has ‘democratised’ the ability to alter or fake photos, and ‘pictures can be fabricated, packaged, and manipulated’.27 Concentration on production has moved the analysis from images of Mussolini seen in isolation and detached from their context to where his photographs are, in David Levi Strauss’s words, ‘an act amid a complex structure of choices’,28 not limited to the instant of recording the image on the negative but extend either side of the event. Identifying the structure of choices helps to place photographs in a greater context. If we could see the complex structure behind a photograph we could find a place where the significance of an image may well be different for the photographer, the subject, the propagandists and those at the site of audiencing.29 These reflections are relevant as they underline problems still largely unsolved about our culture of seeing and the relation between images and propaganda, the inherent ambiguity of the medium of photography and the fallacy of our current image-based communication, so-called civilisation of the image. The illusory principle that photographs as communication are somehow more objective, and less ideological than words, is still persistent in contemporary informational structure.30 These authors believe it is not accurate to talk of civilisation of the image when we are still, and perhaps more than ever, a civilisation of writing where information is to a large extent not as visual, since ‘no theoretical distinction has been made between the photograph as scientific evidence and the photograph as a means of communication’.31 On the other hand, discerning between photographs as a reflection of reality versus artifice is futile, as ‘every photograph is a certificate of presence’.32 ‘Photography never lies’, since even the most tendentious or artificial cannot deny its existence. Effective propaganda, the sociological rather than political type, goes unrecognised and is not perceived as such by

27 Adatto, Picture Perfect, p. 7. 28 Levi Strauss, Between the Eyes, pp. 32–33. 29 John Berger, with Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling (New York: Pantheon Books,

1982), p. 100, quoted in Levi Strauss, Between the Eyes, p. 32. 30 Strauss, Between the Eyes, pp. 16–17. 31 Berger, Another Way of Telling, p. 100, in Between the Eyes by Levi Strauss, p. 16. 32 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Editions du Seuil, 1980), p. 87.

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those influenced by it,33 as it is largely ‘agreeable’ since obvious lies are not used.34 This was a principle followed during Fascism as well, when propaganda being composed only of obvious lies was not favoured, a style clearly shown in Ciano’s insistence on the importance of not making propaganda too obvious in order to be more effective.35 The dispersive and fragmented nature of the activities in support of the production of photographs in the construction of the image of the Duce has been identified in this analysis, and one of the principal elements, the making of the image, has been looked at. The transmutation from the taking or making of an image to the site of audiencing, or the photograph’s trajectory, required the intervention of varying numbers of agents and the composition of these agents changed according to circumstance. To establish the level of individual control by the various agents, what autonomy they may have exercised in a nondemocratic polity such as the Fascist regime, may be revealed by tracing the individual photograph. The study of a series of selected images, concerning the evolution of the Duce’s image throughout the regime, can lead to reflections regarding the extent to which Mussolini was the controller of his representation, but only with reference to a particular publication and the comparative use of images when they first appeared in the press. Rather than passive and unimaginative technicians, photographers have been reconsidered as contributors to the symbolic arena in the cult of the Duce. This has allowed the analysis to focus on their activity and thus provide a sense of the overall complexity of the Duce’s photographic representation. Furthermore this approach has shifted the attention away from the consideration of propaganda as a ‘sinister invention of a few evil men’ manipulating a passive mass of illiterates. Instead it has placed emphasis on the Fascist photographic campaign for the Duce as a sociological phenomenon, in the sense that it had ‘roots and reasons in

33 Strauss, Between the Eyes, p. 18. 34 Ibid., p. 18. 35 Ciano appears to have said that: ‘to be even more effective propaganda should be understated and without excessive praise to avoid any suspicion of brain washing’, in ACS, Mcp, Dgp, b. 68, fasc. ‘Invio materiale di propaganda in Francia’, letter from Landini, 7 aprile 1934, in Benedetta Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero. La propaganda del fascismo all’estero (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), p. 31.

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the need of the group that sustained it’.36 To go beyond the model of the mythical and superhuman figure of the Duce, who ‘decides to make propaganda’ and constructs his own myth,37 is to shift the focus to image making and begin to enquire into the complex relation between politics and the development of modern mass culture and cultural consumption. Finally, to identify which institutions, companies or individuals were involved in producing, reproducing, approving and rejecting photographs of the Duce showed how the propagation of the myth engaged society. The contradiction underlying the use of a progressively accessible medium of communication, such as photography, to condition a population raises further questions about the ambiguity of the role of those involved in the creation and distribution of the Duce’s images, like the photographers, who ‘made’ his image into an international idol. For propaganda to be so far-reaching, it must correspond to a need, where the propagandee may not just be a passive victim but susceptible to propaganda, even if for a complex variety of reasons, possibly even deriving a sense of fulfilment and participation from it.38 The contribution of photographers was part of the delicate and controversial relationship between power and cultural activities. Photographers of the Duce were closely monitored, but censorship was also preventive and frequently not even necessary as they seemed to know in advance what was required from them. As propaganda cannot operate in a vacuum, the photographic strategy of the Duce was rooted in a reality that it was part of. The ideological and social heterogeneity of photographers did not prevent their professional participation, and, albeit limited, a certain level of decision within the process that turned Mussolini into tones, planes, shapes and ultimately into an image for the printed page.39 Photographers did not work in isolation either, as the cult of the Duce was constructed with the support of a multiform photographic industry made up of a diversified net of activities, many of which were linked together or practised by the same person, such as typographers, editors, journalists, graphics, printers, developers, retouchers, among 36 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Foundation of Men’s Attitude (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 121. 37 Ibid., p. 118. 38 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 121. 39 Hans-Michael Koetzle, Photo Icons: The Story Behind the Pictures (Taschen, 2002),

II, p. 109.

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whom photographers were the most visible. The photographic strategy of the Duce therefore involved a diverse network of agents, where propaganda was differently inflected, although united on a collective centre of interest.40

40 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 49.

PART III

Audiencing

CHAPTER 8

The Visual Presence of the Duce

Images as Objects As the seeing of an image always takes place in a specific location with its own particular practices,1 the impact of Mussolini’s images must have been mediated by the context, whether public or private. Images were read not only in differing locations but also various formats such as newspapers, posters, book covers, labels, postcards, stamps, notes or official portraits. Within each format, these images occupied a precise spatial location, where their fluid curves or jagged fragments, volumes, shadows, lines or planes images could be arranged, connected, disconnected or isolated.2 The prevailing tendency to consider photographs as two-dimensional images is gradually complemented by authors concentrating on the photograph’s ‘conceptualisation’ where images are considered also as objects.3 Inextricably connected to its materiality, printed on paper, card, textiles and other material surfaces, a photograph’s significance may vary

1 Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials, (London: Sage Publications, 2007), p. 11. 2 W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 42. 3 Penny Tinkler, Using Photographs in Social and Historical Research (London: Sage, 2013), p. 2.

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according to its presentation, to ‘the place of the photographic imageobject in personal and social life’,4 in one word, a ‘context’. According to John Taylor, documentary photographs ‘mean next to nothing on their own’,5 as one can only be affected by photographs if they are informed by political consciousness; otherwise, isolated images can lead to indifference.6 By contrast, Jean Baudrillard believes that audiences can in fact be seduced and captured by media images even when they reproduce violence, since viewers will always put a distance between themselves and the horror. Images can therefore produce an effect even when they stand alone since their purpose is to alleviate, divert, distract and, in other words, deny reality.7 John Keane, on the other hand, rejects Baudrillard’s theory of the media turning horror into light entertainment, since it supposes the audiences are ‘stupid misanthropes’.8 Although it is difficult to determine the reason, time and intensity of empathy triggered by photographs, Keane argues that emotional responses are inevitable.9 Focusing on both the ambivalent nature of the medium and how Mussolini’s photographs were employed as a means of indoctrination can help us to reflect on ‘what use to make of memory’.10 As the nature of audience’s response to official Fascist photographs presents a difficult source to probe,11 rather than an attempt to measure the effects and the emotions produced by his photographs,12 this section offers a 4 Ibid., p. 2. 5 John Taylor, Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War

(New York:

Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 16. 6 Ibid., p. 18. 7 Jean Baudrillard, America (London: Verso, 1988), pp. 109–111. 8 John Keane, Reflections on Violence (London: Verso, 1996), p. 179. 9 Ibid., p. 182. 10 Taylor, Body Horror, p. 23. 11 On the production of an official Fascist culture policy, its composite and multi-

faceted nature, see Marla Susan Stone, The Patron State: Culture & Politics in Fascist Italy (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 16. 12 Studies of personal testimonies produced in popular memories, either on cultural consumption from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, see David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass culture and Italian society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); see also an unpublished research project, L’immagine di Mussolini nelle memorie popolari, by Filippo Colombara (www.isrn.it) on the impact of Mussolini’s personal meeting during his visit in 1939 in the Novara Province (North of Italy), who also published ‘Il carnevale di Mussolini. 25 luglio 1943: simboli e riti di

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quantitative examination, looking at the frequency of image types and the evolution of Mussolini’s published photographic representation. The analysis concentrates on composition and context and seeks to determine the frequency of Mussolini’s image against that of the king who, throughout the Fascist dictatorship, remained the constitutional head of state. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and the royal family in general, used photography as a propaganda tool to enhance their visibility well before the advent of Fascism (the first postcard of a portrait of the king being from 1896).13 As one of the key tools of a dictatorship, which can be used to bolster charisma, is to impose the image of the leader on a collective imaginary, the following is concerned with the extent of Mussolini’s presence in the press and other media. By means of sampling, an attempt has been made to gauge the way in which Mussolini became a constant visual presence. The sampled images are divided into a series of typologies in order to better appreciate the variety of ways the Duce was represented. In this chapter, images published as illustrated material are divided into types for the purpose of this analysis. There is no evidence, so far, to suggest that photographers, editors, or authors during the regime were producing or using images according to these categories. The various types of representation of the Duce are self-explanatory and the note below gives a more comprehensive description of each type.14 The

una comunità nazionale’, in L’Impegno. Rivista di storia contemporanea, 1 (2005), 31–57 and Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices. An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy (London: Vintage, 2012). 13 Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), p. 151. 14 ‘Origins ’ when elements in the image refer to Mussolini’s early life until his first military service in 1903; ‘activist ’ covers the period of political agitation as a socialist, interventionist and Fascist, including as a role as a newspaper editor, before his entering into government; ‘soldier’ includes images of Mussolini in uniform for his initial military service as a conscript and later during the First World War; ‘politician’ includes images where Mussolini in government conformed to the respectably-dressed bourgeois type of politician and political orator; the Duce ‘alone’, the most frequently reproduced type, refers to Mussolini in his recognisable guise as dictator (predominantly uniformed) with characteristic posture and gesture; ‘with people’ when he was in company of a limited number of individuals; ‘oceanic crowd’ when before a vast gathering; ‘with King ’ and ‘with Hitler’ are self-explanatory; and ‘man of action’ shows Mussolini as a dynamic man incorporating the Fascist ideals of movement and celebrating technology; ‘body’ refers to the type of a significant yet limited number of images celebrating the Duce’s bare chest

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chapter continues looking at images in various types of publications which featured Mussolini. The choice of a diversified sample is intentional since it corresponds to a broad concept of reading Mussolini’s images that includes the differing visible media carrying his effigy. Fascist propaganda images are read in their entirety, as if a sequence spanning the Ventennio (twenty years of regime) marked by particular events and inconsistencies.15 It is also necessary to stress that the propaganda material here examined was subjected to forms of overt and covert censorship. Both the events and subject, as represented in Fascist propaganda photography, were imposed, the scenes were prepared and even the position of the lens pre-established.16 Control was exercised by the Ministry of Propaganda and many images were censored. Also, the location or the choice of ‘sets’, such as ephemeral and temporary structures or backgrounds made of material, plaster or wood, was planned and decided beforehand by the Fascist authorities. During public functions, even background individuals were purposefully selected to be photographed close to the Duce to give the impression of real peasants or workers and thus create images of seemingly casual, spontaneous contacts between the Duce and the crowds.17 Taking all this into consideration, it is problematic to establish the extent the producers of propaganda images worked independently; the bulk of instructions on how to photograph Mussolini were preventive and issued prior to an event or public function.18 Therefore, the photographs considered in this sample of reading material reflect Fascism’s self-image rather than any independent traceable indication of Mussolini’s standing.

Biographies Biographies were a popular genre thus used as a propaganda tool by the regime as part of the construction of the cult of the Duce. In Mussolini immaginario, Luisa Passerini examined biographies published between and body; ‘man of culture’ where Mussolini is represented as a learned man; ‘private’ where Mussolini is seen in unofficial or family situations; ‘evoking ’ where Mussolini was absent but elements in the picture evoked his presence. 15 Luca Criscenti, ‘La memoria in archivio. I fondi fotografici dell’Istituto Luce’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia, ed. by De Luna and others, I, p. 283. 16 Ibid., p. 283. 17 Ibid., p. 283. 18 Ibid., p. 283.

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1915 and 1939, of which there were about four hundred, a number that gives an idea of the consistent market for this type of publication throughout the regime. Despite Mussolini’s personal suspicion towards the genre (according to Passerini he used to advise his biographers to wait until after his death before publishing), there was an increase in the publication of biographies between 1933 and 1939, the period Passerini considers as the phase of Fascism when control and centralisation of the mass media greatly increased.19 For the purpose of analysis, the sample considered includes twenty illustrated biographies of Mussolini evenly spread between 1923 and 1942 with 372 images, 320 of which were of Mussolini. These biographies, written during the regime, were chosen principally for their use of photographs and falling within the period in question. They were published in Italy and abroad, some in large numbers, such as those by Margherita Sarfatti in 1925 in English and a year later in Italian, or by Giorgio Pini, whose work was still being reprinted with revisions in the early 1940s.20 Other biographical publications of Mussolini with photographs were confined to specific fields, for example sport, the volume Mussolinia and music in the biography by Raffaello De Rensis, as well as others written for a specific audience like that for children by Mara Buonamici.21 Type ‘ Alone’ Reviewing the biographies, the most frequently reproduced type of image was that of the Duce ‘alone’ and 70% included this type of image, where ‘alone’ refers to those individual photographic representations of Mussolini taken either close up, or head and shoulders, or from the waist up, frontal or in profile, as was typical of his official portraits. This type also included full-figure shots from a variety of angles and in differing circumstances, public or private, where his figure stood out as he was spatially isolated, a type of composition sometimes accentuated in the editorial process when his figure was cropped or cut out against a neutral 19 Luisa Passerini, Mussolini immaginario (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991), pp. 154–157. 20 Margherita G. Sarfatti, The life of Benito Mussolini (London: Thornton Butterworth,

1925), p. 342; Giorgio Pini, Benito Mussolini. La sua vita fino ad oggi dalla strada al potere (Bologna: Cappelli, 1927); Giorgio Pini, Benito Mussolini (Berlin: Freiheitsverlag, 1939). 21 Maria Buonamici, Duce Nostro (Florence: Nemi, 1934).

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Fig. 8.1 Inside cover of Le Giornate Fiumane di Mussolini by Edoardo Susmel (1937)

background. An example of a photograph with the Duce ‘alone’ present in these biographies can be seen in Le giornate fiumane di Mussolini by Edoardo Susmel (1937),22 where an image of Mussolini taken in the 1920s shows his head and shoulders looking down as if reading (Fig. 8.1). The image features a handwritten dedication by Mussolini to the author. As in paintings, the individual rather than the group representation was associated with specific values and meanings. At the connotative level, focus on the figure alone might have helped to recreate a closer 22 Edoardo Susmel, Le Giornate Fiumane di Mussolini (Florence, 1937).

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relationship with the spectator in the form of a dialogue or monologue according to differing ideological and emotional viewpoints. Also the types of lighting used, daylight or electric, would affect exposure as well as expressive contents, accentuating the frown, solemnity or the more relaxed which could have explicitly conditioned ways of relating to his individual photographs. The importance given to individual representations needs to be put in the context of ‘assumptions of genius, heroism and the nature of intellectual advancement’,23 relevant in the context of a biography but also useful to reinforce a sense of importance of the individual portrayed intended to inspire admiration in viewers. Images of Mussolini ‘alone’ also had a technical and practical advantage. More versatile than that of a group representation, photographs of the ‘Duce alone’ could be reproduced in a greater variety of shapes, sizes and bases for different audiences and markets. Edited in turn as an official framed portrait, a poster or a postcard as well as a front-page press photograph, Mussolini’s individual portrait could also easily be transformed into an icon or a symbolic image. Two images of this type figure in the sample of biographies examined, such as in Sarfatti (1926) and Pini (1927) which reproduce a full-figure portrait of the Duce in a typical pose as orator, left hand on hip and right hand held up in a gesture easily recognisable by Italians as indicating he was making a point. Another significant image of the type ‘alone’, the head and shoulders of Mussolini staring into the distance against a dark background, wearing the uniform of Duce of Fascism, black shirt and shoulder sash, was published in the biography Mussolini the man of destiny by Vittorio E. De Fiori in 1928 (Fig. 8.2).24 This image taken originally in October 1922 in Naples as a full figure among other Fascist gerarchs was later cropped, mounted on a plain background and reproduced in a variety of publications, such as the book cover of an illustrated biography Il Duce published by Nerbini25 and also as part of a photomontage published as a postcard by Zaccaria in 1922.26 As previously noted, the images in these biographies were subject, like 23 Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660–2000 (London: Reaktion, 2000), p. 45. 24 Vittorio E. De Fiori, Mussolini, The Man of Destiny, trans. Mario A. Pei (London and Toronto: Dent & Sons, 1928). 25 Giuseppe Nerbini, Il Duce: biografia del Duce narrata al popolo (Florence: G. Nerbini, 1927). 26 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 56.

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Fig. 8.2 Images of Mussolini from 1922 after the March on Rome were reproduced throughout the regime. On the left is a postcard, centre a booklet published by Nerbini, right a photomontage published by Zaccaria from 1922. The image was also used in the biography by Vittorio De Fiori in 1928

all other propaganda images to censorship according to conventional criteria established by Fascist authorities or self-imposed control by editors and perhaps authors. Passerini’s analysis of Diario di guerra, written by Mussolini and published initially in Mussolini’s daily Il Popolo d’Italia and then in 1923 as a book,27 emphasises the measured and calculated choice of words, tone and anecdotes on behalf of the author, suggesting Mussolini’s first-hand contribution to the construction of his own myth.28 Type ‘ Man of Action’ Continuing the analysis with the next two most frequent types, the ‘man of action’ and, interestingly, images ‘evoking’ Mussolini, both appeared in 50% of the biographies. Photographs of the Duce as a ‘man of action’ 27 Benito Mussolini, Il mio diario di Guerra (Milan, 1923). 28 Passerini, Mussolini immaginario, p. 15.

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combined the values of a rising middle class of ‘proper and chastely natural body with the masochised body of mass popular entertainment’29 projected the image of Fascist masculine corporeality signifying strength and energy and ultimately of a modern prime minister. In the construction of the Duce, sport was an insistent theme,30 and photographs of the ‘man of action’ type were spread fairly evenly across the period with a few images repeated such as Mussolini fencing in Il grande educatore dell’Italia nuova by Oddone Tesini in 1931 and Mussolinia in 1928 (Fig. 8.3), and as aviator in Mussolini aviator by Guido Mattioli in 1936,31 also used on the third page of Corriere della Sera in 1939 to celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of Fascist aviation (Figs. 8.4–8.5) Type ‘ Evoking’ An aura of mystery may have been considered a relevant factor in the politics of symbols. As well as presence, absence appeared to be an important iconographic element in the construction of the Duce’s cult. Built around Mussolini’s figure, even when he was physically absent, photographs evoking his presence were published at a consistent rate, although this was partly attributable to four images being repeated, one of which, his birthplace, appeared in three different biographies, in 1924, 1927 and 1939 (Fig. 8.6).32 Despite the varied content, either of his birthplace, his mother, father or his image on the wall in a large photograph illustrating the ‘Covo’ in Milan in the early 1920s, and this ‘evoking’ type of image was a constant throughout the regime. Relying on the connection to the physically absent Mussolini, photographs evoking his presence could be understood similarly to the promise of viewing a relic, as if through representing parts of his personal sphere this could communicate supernatural or saintly qualities.

29 Maurizia Boscagli, Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996) p. 129. 30 Richard Bosworth, Mussolini, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 211. 31 Guido Mattioli, Mussolini aviatore (Siena: Meini Editrice d’Arte, 1933). 32 Mussolini, Il mio diario di Guerra; Giorgio Pini, Mussolini (Bologna: Cappelli, 1927) and (1939).

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Fig. 8.3 This image appeared in Il Grande Educatore dell’Italia Nuova by Oddone Tesini in 1931 and Mussolini e lo Sport in 1928

Type ‘ Politician’ With decreasing frequency, 45% of biographies included images of Mussolini as ‘politician’. There is little repetition of images of this type, possibly because there were so many available. Offering constantly updated images of Mussolini as a politician could have been useful to communicate a sense of immediacy and relevance in current affairs.

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Fig. 8.4 This image is from the book Mussolini Aviatore by Guido Mattioli 1936 Fig. 8.5 This image was used in the book Mussolini Aviatore by Guido Mattioli 1936. It was also published in the Corriere della Sera on the third page in 1939

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Fig. 8.6 Image of Mussolini’s birthplace in Predappio and nearby summer residence, Rocca delle Caminate, featured in various publications including this edition of the L’Illustrazione Italiana, 11 July 1938. In La Riviera Romagnola one of the numerous articles on Mussolini’s birthplace from 13 February 1933

Mussolini was represented as a politician especially in the first ten years up to 1931, with the bulk of images of him in top hat, civilian clothes, looking inspired or busy writing at a desk (Fig. 8.7). Type ‘ with People’ The type ‘with people’ was present in 40% of biographies, although this type accounts for nearly half of all the illustrations in the twenty biographies. In general, biographies with illustrations published after 1936 included many more illustrations and in these Mussolini appeared frequently as interacting with people, for instance at a rally. Images of the ‘Duce surrounded by people or soldiers’ were included in eight biographies, nearly half the sample, for a total of 144 images, more than a third of the total 320 images in all the biographies considered. Six of these biographies were published after 1932, when the technology

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Fig. 8.7 Left, the book cover of Mussolini by Arturo Rossato in 1922. To the right, the same image on a postcard from the 1920s. Bottom, an image from the early 1920s of Mussolini on the inside cover of his book Scritti e Discorsi, vol. IV 1924, published in hardback dated 25 July 1934. Later only a couple of biographies in 1938 and 1939, by Villaroel and Pini, used this type of image

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of photographic reproduction made the publication of the biographical photo-essay possible as well as the inclusion of more images in the normal biographies. This is demonstrated in the sample where, in the second half of the Ventennio, biographies had twice as many illustrations as those published in the first. Group representations, rather than individual photographic portraits, might have reinforced a communication style that encouraged the public to see Mussolini as a man of the people. The abundance of photo-opportunities offered by circumstances, and during the frequent visits or journeys, resulted in no repetition within this type of image. Even though group representations might not have offered the immediate practical advantage of individual portraits, where the subject can be isolated, through message shaping and image orchestration, strategic editorial practice focused on frame control. Framing or the process, as Robert Entman explains, by which some aspects of a person are ‘emphasised over others to promote a particular causal interpretation, problem construction, or moral evaluation’,33 was used to construct well-known types of images of which some had become iconic. Although considered a prime candidate to be censored and banned by the propaganda authorities, due to Mussolini’s alleged aversion to being photographed next to religious people,34 an image in Giuseppe Villaroel’s Realtà e mito di Mussolini,35 published in 1938, which also included an un-retouched iconic image of Mussolini receiving the sword of Islam, showed him in a stationary car with his aides talking to a group of five nuns on the side of the road. Half-obscured behind them, a carabiniere (policeman) with some other people can be seen. This same image was reproduced in Duce e Popolo by Giuseppe Massani in 1942, although here the image had been cropped eliminating the aides and retouched so that only Mussolini and three nuns were now visible (Fig. 8.8).

33 Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43 (1993), 51–58, in Image Bite Politics, ed. by Grabe and Page Bucy, p. 98. 34 Mimmo Franzinelli and Emanuele Valerio Marino, Il duce proibito. Le fotografie di Mussolini che gli Italiani non hanno mai visto (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), p. 58. 35 Giuseppe Villaroel, Realtà e mito di Mussolini (Turin: Chiantore, 1938).

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Fig. 8.8 This manipulated image shows Mussolini talking alone with three nuns reproduced in ‘Duce e Popolo’ from June 1942, published by Il Rubicone and edited by Giuseppe Massani

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Type ‘ Origins’ The type ‘origins’ (images illustrating Mussolini’s early life until his first enlistment) and ‘activist’ (covering the period of political agitation) were both present in 35% of biographies and fairly consistently spread over the period in question. There are seven authors who included an image of his ‘origins’ at regular intervals throughout the period, but particularly notable was the image of Mussolini at 14 which was reproduced three times, in 1928, 1931 and 1938,36 while Mussolini in Lausanne in 1904, dedicated to his mother, twice, in 1925 and 1927. As images from Mussolini’s early years seem to have been few, particularly before 1905, it was not surprising that those available would be reproduced more frequently. Nevertheless, a particular image, Mussolini at 14, could be considered as having a life of its own beyond being reproduced as biographical evidence. Type ‘ Soldier’ and ‘ Oceanic Crowd’ With the type of ‘soldier’, present in 25% of biographies, images used were often repeated, again as there were few taken of Mussolini during his military service; ‘Mussolini and oceanic crowd’ was also present in 25% of biographies, although three-quarters of them were reproduced in three of the five biographies published later in 1938, 1939 and 1942, a trend that shows how Mussolini and the oceanic crowd, although used already in 1928 and 1931, became increasingly important in the last few years of the regime. As Jeffrey Schnapp explains, ‘translated into graphic elements in a media landscape transformed by the electronic transmission of photographic images to press agencies’,37 photographs of the Duce in front of la folla oceanica (the oceanic mass) reflected Mussolini’s conviction that he alone understood the psychology of Italians and knew how to shape and channel the mighty energy released by the heterogeneous, potentially menacing, multitudes.38 A photo-mosaic fabricated from several separate 36 The biographies referred to by date are: Sarfatti 1925, Pini 1927–39, De Fiori 1928,

Tesini 1931. 37 Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ‘Mob Porn’, in Crowds, ed. by Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Matthew Tiews (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 2. 38 ‘I have known the masses for thirty years’ Mussolini once said, in Emil Ludwig, Colloqui con Mussolini. Riproduzione delle bozze della prima edizione con le correzioni del Duce (Milan: Mondadori, 1950), p. 120.

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photographs in Realtà e mito written by Villaroel in 1938 showed the Duce in front of ‘100,000 senior officials gathered in the Foro Mussolini on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the March on Rome’.39 The image was a result of juxtaposed photographs assembled in various formats and manipulated to enhance the exclusive focus of the ‘dialogue’ between the Duce and the masses. Compared to the Rivista Illustrata foldouts, examined by Schnapp, where photographic composites exaggerated the horizontal extension of the crowd, here, perhaps constrained by the format of the book, the image selected was a succinct graphic synthesis. As if a composite photo-essay, the Duce on one side of the image can be seen on a podium above a vast crowd, and on the other in close up seen from below making a typical oratorical gesture. Together, these create a sense of dynamism. Interestingly, Schnapp stresses that the impact of film on graphics and photography can be seen through the ‘increasing pursuit of effects of ‘liveness” and “closeness” to the event’.40 Type ‘ with King’ Finally, the quantitative presence of the Duce with the king in all twenty biographies. In 20%, the Duce was shown together with the king, similar to those which included images of his private sphere which were more frequent in the biographies published during the early years, whereas images of Mussolini and the king could be found at fairly regular intervals throughout the regime. The evolution of the relationship between Mussolini and the king can be seen in the different representations included in the early and later biographies. Sarfatti’s biography in 1926 showed a smiling Prime Minister Mussolini in a raincoat next to the more solemn king dressed in full uniform, or Vittorio De Fiori, in 1928, included a photograph of Mussolini as the newly appointed prime minister in morning dress bowing deferentially to the king. Later images modified the mode of representation showing Mussolini on a par with the king, as in Mattioli in 1936 where they sit together in a relaxed manner. Three years later, in Giorgio Pini in 1939, the emphasis had shifted completely and, although the pair are shown walking side by side, Mussolini dominated.

39 Villaroel, Realtà e mito, Fig. 27. 40 Schnapp, ‘Mob Porn’, in Crowds, ed. by Schnapp and Tiews, p. 38.

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Book Covers, Posters Another significant series of images are front covers, book jackets and posters. The long-term neglect on the part of historiography of the illustrations on the outside of books may be justified by the idea that books have never been purely consumer goods.41 Books are ambiguous products, a mixture of valuable items associated with scholarship, wisdom, trivia and worldly transactions that nevertheless need to be sold. In that never-ending ‘teasing game of hide and seek with commerce’, Alan Powers defines the book as a product that the editorial industry strives to sell in an increasingly competitive market.42 A book jacket, as a selling device, was an excellent form of visual communication, more often than not subliminal. As such, also it is relevant to the researcher when looking to establish the reason behind a publisher or an author’s choice of images to encapsulate content. Posters on the other hand have been the object of several studies,43 and those based on graphic rendering of large printed photographs, of Mussolini in particular, were frequently placed in public spaces as a means of persuasion and political mobilisation. Functioning also as miniature propaganda posters, images of the Duce on front covers and jackets, as well as those inside books, were further elements in the visual construction of his myth. As David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle note, good sales of Mussolini’s biographies demonstrated that he was a profitable subject,44 and images on covers may have helped to sell books as well as confirm the Duce as the principal emblem of the regime. His image was deemed to exercise enough appeal to feature on an item for sale, a practice which can also be seen in a number of recent publications where images are chosen from the same repertoire used under the regime. These images on front covers, although constructed 41 Alan Powers and Mitchell Beazley, Front Cover: Great Book Jacket and Cover Design (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2001), p. 6. 42 Ibid. p. 6. 43 See Jeffrey Schnapp, Revolutionary Tides: The Art of the Political Poster 1914–

1989 (Milan: Skira, 2005); Luciano Cheles, ‘Iconic Images’, Modern Italy, 21, 4 (2016) 453–478; Dario Cimorelli and Anna Villari, eds., Posters: Speed in Italian Advertising, 1890–1955 (Cinisello Balsamo (Mi): SilvanaEditoriale, 2016); Anna Villari, ‘Immagine e comunicazione del Fascismo. Il dibattito sulla pubblicità e l”arte “novissima” del manifesto’, in Novecento. Arte e vita tra le due guerre (Cinisello Balsamo (Mi): SilvanaEditoriale, 2013) pp. 91–105. 44 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 216.

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for effect so many years ago, are still used to capture attention and solicit emotional response today. Studying photographs as they were used during the regime also means reconstructing the context and ‘ways of seeing’ these images.45 Old photographs of kiosks or bookstalls of the time show how reading materials, such as books, pamphlets, maps, postcards, posters, comics, periodicals and newspapers, were seen by customers and passersby. Reading material exhibited to the public was heterogeneous in appearance and format but made uniform through the representation of the same subject in the same medium. To assess how visual objects were displayed could involve a systematic chronological investigation according to geographical areas and different social groups and gender. What follows is an impression taken from disparate material displayed and available to the public at the time. This material has been selected from various years spanning the regime, and although we cannot be sure of the context of its presentation to the public, it is a condensed visual reckoning of what people may have seen. The sample considered is from twenty-one book covers, not including the biographies already considered, but other volumes published fairly evenly throughout the Ventennio. Twelve of the twenty-one covers, 57%, represented the Duce ‘alone’, 24% were as a ‘politician’, 10% with an ‘oceanic crowd’ and 5% of his ‘origins’ or ‘with people’. Other forms of visual access to the Duce were on the covers of four periodicals, three showing the Duce ‘alone’ (1932, 1936, 1937) and one as a ‘man of action’ (1933). There is also a poster showing an official portrait, frequently reproduced in other media, of the Duce in uniform with a forage cap, and some school exercise books with images on the front cover of Mussolini in a helmet with a machine gun team (Fig. 8.9, Fig. 8.10, Fig. 8.11, Fig. 8.12 and Fig. 8.13).

Daily Papers: Corriere Della Sera From the mid-1920s, the fascistised newspaper publishing industry played a leading role in the construction and diffusion of the Duce’s cult, with dailies and periodicals considered as a major instrument for national

45 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC—Penguin, 1972), p. 10; Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: an Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2007), p. 8.

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Fig. 8.9 Image of Mussolini in a helmet on the book cover, OPERA BALILLA, September 1934. On the right a similar image on a calendar, P.N.F. anno XV 1936–1937

propaganda.46 Corriere della Sera, founded in 1876, was one of the more important. Traditionally, a moderate liberal-monarchical broadsheet, the Milanese newspaper had, from the beginning of the century, harnessed up-to-date printing technologies in order to expand print run. By the early 1920s, it averaged half a million.47 The fascistisation of Corriere della Sera began after the Matteotti crisis in 1925, when the newspaper came under the direct influence of the regime through the governmentendorsed news agency Stefani, the only source authorised to circulate

46 Adolfo Mignemi, ‘La costruzione degli strumenti di propaganda’ in Propaganda politica e mezzi di comunicazione di massa tra fascismo e democrazia, ed. by Adolfo Mignemi (Turin: Gruppo Abele, 1995), p. 18. 47 Fondazione Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera ASCdS sezione Amministrazione Gestionale Tirature.

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Fig. 8.10 Two book covers, Un uomo e un popolo by Carlo Delcroix in 1928 and IL DUCE alle Gerarchie di Roma from 23 February 1941

photographs of the Duce.48 The Fascist Party, whose secretary was Achille Starace from 1931, and Mussolini’s Press Office were later incorporated into the Ministry of Press and Propaganda. With the consequent focus on the construction of the cult of the Duce, the transition from the persuasive to the enforcing phase was rapid and the number of veline (instructions) increased. In 1937–1938, more than 4000 directives were issued in twelve months as the party secretary Starace bombarded the editorial staff and governing bodies of the press with observations and warnings.49 On occasion, even Mussolini himself would call or write

48 Ermanno Paccagnini, ‘Dal primo al secondo conflitto mondiale’, in Storia del giornalismo italiano. Dalle origini a oggi, ed. by Giuseppe Farinelli, Ermanno Paccagnini, Giovanni Santambrogio and Angela Ida Villa (Turin: UTET, 2004), p. 285. 49 Mauro Forno, La stampa del Ventennio. Strutture e trasformazioni nella stato totalitario (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005), p. 38.

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Fig. 8.11 Top left, is a postcard from a Luce image from the Battle for Grain taken in July 1934 in Borgo Pasubio (Rome); on an exercise book and bottom left as a front page propaganda booklet in 1937

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Fig. 8.12 Below another series documenting the Battle for Grain, published in La Domenica del Corriere in 1937

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Fig. 8.13 These images document some of the differing bases used for reproducing Mussolin’s image. Top is the cover of a periodical GIOVENTÙ FASCISTA, published 31 May 1936; bottom left, a much reproduced Luce image published here as a calendar for the P.N.F. 1938–1939; right, a large print, 34 × 48 cm., possibly a wall portrait

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directly to newspaper directors and even individual journalists.50 Gaetano Polverelli, appointed Head of the Press Office in 1931, made a point of ensuring that there was a concentration on the myth of the Duce as an exemplary interpretation of the ‘new’ Italian values.51 In 1934, Corriere della Sera started producing its own photographs, but like other broadsheets at the time, the direction of the newspaper preferred an austere graphic where text prevailed. In fact, experiments with so-called illustrated dailies were not successful. The traditional and conservative readership of Corriere della Sera preferred a paper where text was dominant, and argument informed through argued criticism.52 This approach was shown in the sample here examined. Before 1935, there were no images either of the king or Mussolini. The approach of Corriere della Sera was graphically modelled, at least until the mid-1930s, on other imageless and text-based broadsheets such as the English Times.53 Only from November 1934 was telephoto used.54 Stampa Sera, the evening paper of La Stampa, published the first telephoto images in Italy of a football match between Italy and England.55 The following analysis of Corriere della Sera is based on three weeks per season per year (1922, 1925, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938, 1940) for a total of 504 issues. Years were selected according to criteria of importance, each year covering a significant event that most probably would have been photographed and the results considered for publication in a variety of media. Crucial events such as the March on Rome on 28 October 1922, the Lateran Pacts on 11 February 1929 or the Decennial on 1 July 1932 were news that one would have expected to be illustrated with photographs. In fact, no images of these events were printed at all. On 31 October 50 Philip Cannistraro, La fabbrica del consenso (Bari-Rome: Laterza, 1975), p. 194. 51 Ibid., p. 80. 52 Anna Lisa Carlotti, ‘Incisione e/o fotografia. L’Illustrazione Italiana e La Domenica del Corriere’, in Fotografia e fotografi, ed. by Carlotti, p. 52. 53 Giovanni Gozzini, Storia del giornalismo (Milan: Mondadori, 2000), p. 222. 54 Istituto Luce used the wirephoto or telephotography (telefoto) which was a tech-

nology for transmitting a photograph over a telephone line. Invented in the nineteenth century, the 1920s saw a marked improvement in the technology, see http://wikipedia. org/wiki/Wirephoto. 55 Paccagnini, ‘Dal primo al secondo conflitto mondiale’, in Storia del Giornalismo Italiano, ed. by Farinelli and others, p. 292.

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1922, for example, six columns, dominated by the title ‘Il nuovo Ministero costituito da Mussolini’ (the new Ministry established by Mussolini) in bold, were filled only with text and articles discussing the event; likewise on 13 February 1929, there were seven columns on the front page with no photographs and a title in bold ‘La portata dell’accordo fra lo Stato italiano e la Santa Sede’ (the importance of the agreement between the Italian Government and the Vatican). By contrast, in a quite different graphic style, the morning edition of 10 June 1940, the outbreak of war, was announced by an eight-column front-page article with a large title in bold characters ‘Folgorante annunzio del Duce. La guerra alla Gran Bretagna e alla Francia’ (dramatic announcement by the Duce. War with Great Britain and France) and illustrated with two large images, one was the well-documented photograph of the Duce on the balcony next to a larger photograph of a vast crowd, beneath which appeared the slogan ‘Vincere’! (Victory!)56 (Fig. 8.14). In the selected sample the first photographic images started to appear in Corriere della Sera in 1935, and from then until 1940, there was a growing frequency of the ‘with people’ type which in the analysis counted for 29% of the sample. Since photographs on the front page of Italian newspapers had only a marginal existence before the mid1930s, their role in forming a new style of reporting was limited at first. Soon, however, they came to symbolise technological innovation and thus modernity. They also acted as an additional means to increase elements of multiplicity and penetrability through a greater number of images of Mussolini reaching a larger audience. The photograph on the front page disrupted the previous sense of order and attracted the eye,57 when hung or displayed in the news kiosks (Figs. 8.15–8.16). These were images perhaps chosen strategically to communicate quickly and effectively in an urban environment of traffic and busy pedestrians. The importance of the site of audiencing is a point to consider. Just as nowadays watching a particular movie on a phone, computer or television screen differs from seeing it on a large cinema screen with 3D glasses,58 the viewing of types of image of the Duce in particular places

56 Corriere della Sera, 10 June 1940. 57 Paccagnini, ‘Dal primo al secondo conflitto mondiale’, in Storia del Giornalismo

Italiano, ed. by Farinelli and others, p. 208. 58 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 23.

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Fig. 8.14 Front page of the Corriere della Sera on the declaration of war, 10 June 1940 with an image taken during the event

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Fig. 8.15 Railway station kiosk in Modena taken in 1927. Various images of both Mussolini and the king can be seen (on the occasion of Festa Nazionale del libro Italiano/The National Italian book festival)

made for different experiences. For example, the context of a public space such as a city square was different from that of photographs in books or postcards, viewed principally in isolation or private spaces such as the home. This point about the spaces and practices of display is particularly relevant to those images of the Duce that by the mid-1930s appeared and reappeared in all sorts of places. The frequent and preferred reproduction in the press of images of the Duce close to, or surrounded by, people viewed in a public context was most likely designed to preserve an element of collective experience even when images were consumed privately. Framing, as a technique, can be observed when a populist frame was applied to specific images of the Duce in Corriere della Sera and appears as one of the ways the newspaper and the regime might have considered it more appropriate, and efficient, to infuse symbolic cues with qualities of mass appeal. Appearing as deliberately managed to promote particular

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Fig. 8.16 Railway station kiosk in Alessandria taken in 1927. Various images of both Mussolini and the king can be seen (on the occasion of Festa Nazionale del libro Italiano/The National Italian book festival)

themes, some of the images of the Duce in the sample projected power, authority and control through his authoritatively addressing the crowd, or ‘asserting authority over the piazza’, as described by Peter Burke.59 Others were images of him surrounded by people or, in some cases, going ‘towards people’ that showed him conversing, embracing, sometimes even kissing old people or children, the ‘social symbols of compassion’ who,60 during times of war or economic hardship, emphasised the more compassionate side of the leader. A front-page image over three columns from 4 September 1935, described as sent via telephoto, showed a group of 59 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Use of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 67. 60 Maria Elizabeth Grabe, and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 104.

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Fascist officials with the Duce on a rostrum. The latter, attired in a white uniform, is visible only from the waist up in a pose typical of his visual shorthand, with arms crossed, jutting jaw and looking serious. The impression given is that he is attentively watching a gymnastic display given by the sons of Italians living abroad. Another large, rectangular, front-page image, this time from 1 July 1938, shows the Duce watching the opera in Rome with a serious and interested expression. His whole figure is almost to attention; he is depicted in profile, white hat in hand, in a shot taken from slightly below, with spectators in the background. In front of him, there is Starace who, differently from the Duce, looks directly at the lens. The careful crafting of images used to make the Duce appear progressively more accessible can be seen on the front page that showed the Duce talking to ‘Rurali di Aprilia’ on 5 July 1938. This communication style, which encouraged the public to see the Duce as a man of the people, was reflected in a large rectangular image over four columns under a title in block capitals ‘Il Duce trebbia il grano dell’Agro. E parla ai camerati contadini all’Italia e al mondo’ (the Duce threshing the Agro grain. And speaks to Fascist farm labourers in Italy and the rest of the world). This image was part of the well-documented series of photographs showing the Duce on a threshing machine bare-chested and wearing long white trousers. Three quarters on, standing stiffly upright, chin out with an aggressive expression and his fist in the air surrounded, he talks to a group of Fascist officials and ‘contadini’, labourers, (identified by their straw hats). The following day, these images were followed by another series of rectangular photos on a front page dominated by large block capitals, where, standing next to a farmer in a straw hat, the Duce, with an expression both attentive and concerned, adjusts his neck scarf. Attention-grabbing headlines and captions next to constructed and edited images on the front page of newspapers became a powerful combination in the strategy of image management. Press pictures could be instantly read, understood and potentially interiorised, by a larger portion of the population, and not just the educated who could read text-based media. This type of image handling in support of emphasised political spectacle can be identified in a large front-page photograph in Corriere della Sera of 3 October 1935 in which, although not visible, the Duce was ‘felt’ (Fig. 8.17). ‘Il Duce lancia al mondo l’avvertimento supremo. Il popolo di Milano ascolta, in piazza del Duomo, la voce del Capo’ (The Duce warns the

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Fig. 8.17 Front page of the Corriere della Sera, 3 October 1935, on the declaration of war with Ethiopia. This front page evokes the presence of Mussolini as, although he is not visible in the image, the headlines state that the crowd responds to the Duce’s appeal with ‘an overwhelming declaration of faith’

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world. In the Piazza del Duomo, Milanese listen to the Leader’s voice) was the headline of this image, similar to other iconic photographs in Germany at the time showing an ecstatic crowd surrounding an ‘invisible’ Hitler.61 It represented a vast auditory audience, in front of the suggestively illuminated Milanese cathedral, an image that invited ‘listening rather than a visual inspection’.62 In this potent nocturnal image, with Mussolini’s evoked presence, the religious symbolism of the façade of the cathedral provided the backdrop to the vast listening crowd who allegedly responded to his appeal with ‘un immenso grido di fede’ (an overwhelming declaration of faith) as the caption explained. As well as content, format would seem to have been attentively studied. In the USA, journalistic techniques already benefited from market strategies aimed at satisfying public taste. In 1935, George Gallup, then a university lecturer, founded the American Institute of Public Opinion where the first surveys showed that public opinion and taste had a preference for brief paragraphs and neatly cut rectangular illustrations.63 Although Corriere della Sera editorial staff seem not to have left any written record of their compositional criteria and method,64 the juxtaposition of text and image personalised and in keeping with Corriere della Sera style, showed a cross-referencing not only between different papers but also across countries. The accepted notion that Fascist propaganda was aesthetically influenced by Rodchenko and Soviet Revolution propaganda,65 a style reflected in the oblique framing, taken from below, side lit of selected news photographs of Mussolini,66 might have been complemented by other visual framing and thematic portrayals revealed through the scanning of the newspaper.

61 Claudia Schmolders, Hitler’s Face (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 85–86. 62 Ibid., p. 85. 63 S Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Makers (New

York: Morrow, 1984), p. 139. 64 Literature consulted, visits at the archive and personal contacts with staff at Corriere

della Sera in Milan have not yet resulted in written instructions or criteria to establish a precise influence. 65 Carlo Bertelli and Giulio Bollati, Storia d’Italia. L’immagine fotografica 1845–1945 (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), I, pp. 137–141; Mauro Forno, La stampa del Ventennio. Strutture e trasformazioni nello stato totalitario (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005), p. 169. 66 Carlo Bertelli, ‘La fedeltà incostante’, in Storia d’Italia, I, p. 141.

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It is interesting to note that elements of some visual strategies that today are fully understood and embraced during political campaigns can be identified in some visual constructions adopted by the regime. In post-production, choosing various criteria of formatting, positioning, manipulating images and selecting certain frames over others show that there was a certain awareness of and interest in the achievement of a modernised appearance. It is useful to reflect on the extent to which the editorial process for newspaper images was informed or influenced by methods used in the American press and it seems plausible that the presentation of images was in part directly influenced by individual editors.67 At the end of the 1930s, the Ministry of Press and Propaganda had to review an enormous quantity of material, 81 newspapers, 132 political periodicals, 3860 magazines, 7000 parish bulletins and 32 information agencies.68 According to Mauro Forno, the instructions, or veline (thinsheeted copies), which referred to the publication of photographs were pedantic and some even verged on the grotesque, forbidding the publication of images of ‘sheep shearing’, ‘shaking hands’ or photographs showing the boxer, Primo Carnera, ‘knocked out’.69 In addition, there was a long list of governmental instructions and limitations provided by the ‘Direzione Borelli’ to Corriere della Sera staff on 20 February 1933.70 In another note, of two years later, on 15 April 1935, there were only a few veline concerning photographs where it was prohibited to publish images of ‘women with dogs’, or, on 4 July of the same year, it was categorically forbidden to publish images of ‘soldiers playing the guitar or mandolin’.71 Since those who repeated or formulated the Duce’s wishes

67 ‘Some form of conditioning on behalf of the editors, even if difficult to quantify, would have remained; and could not have been otherwise considering that neither the government nor the party could have been or would like to have been the controlling shareholder in the main newspapers’ in Forno, La stampa del Ventennio, p. 170. 68 Forno, La stampa del Ventennio, p. 180. 69 Ibid., p. 188; Nicola Tranfaglia, La stampa del regime 1932–1943. Le veline del

Minculpop per orientare l’informazione (Milan: Bompiani, 2005), p. 43. 70 ‘Ai Signori Collaboratori, Redattori, Corrispondenti e Correttori del Corriere della Sera—Milano, 20 Febbraio 1933’ in Archivio Storico del Corriere della Sera, f.157C, Oggetto Borelli Aldo Direttore. I found the list which confirm the content and tone described by Forno during a visit to Archivio Storico of Corriere della Sera. 71 Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera, f.157C, oggetto Borelli Aldo Direttore.

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were mostly writers, journalists or bureaucrats, with limited media knowledge, the result fell short of perfect efficiency. According to recent reviews of the Fascist censorial procedures and the practice of sending of thousands of veline from the Ministry of Propaganda to newspapers during the Thirties, the impression is that of a meticulous and pervasive system which, however, was not always rational and coherent.72 Forno observes that this seemingly convoluted process did not translate into a greater or lesser influence on public opinion, especially as, after an initial dip, the major newspapers saw a noticeable increase in circulation during the 1930s.73 On the other hand, Nicola Tranfaglia notes that historical analysis of Fascist censorship, in particular the instructions to the press, has put the accent more on the absurd, sometimes seemingly ludicrous aspect of these instructions rather than the external or the internal mechanisms of Fascist propaganda and the political objectives that formed the instruments of culture and mass media manipulation, of which the veline were one of the most important.74 Tranfaglia questions the principal objectives of Mussolini and his associates, particularly Ciano, Polverelli, Alfieri and later Pavolini, who would become the Minister of Popular Culture during the key years of the war, as well as Manlio Morgagni and the bureaucrats who enacted directives coming personally from the dictator. In addition, Bruno Maida emphasises the importance of self-censorship and remembers that during a speech given by Mussolini at the end of 1928 to sixty newspaper editors in Palazzo Chigi, the Duce likened the press to an orchestra with Fascism as its conductor.75 Regarding the censorship of images, the governing body of the Italian press exercised an active revision of all prints and photographs reproducing the Duce’s likeness, received from the Prefectures then sent to the Ministry, thus removing from circulation those which did not conform to the required aesthetic and convey dignity.76 Interestingly, Maida’s analysis focuses on the complexity of the project of repressive censorial direction during the regime and its synergistic nature concerning both employees

72 Forno, La stampa del Ventennio, p. 197. 73 Ibid., p. 197. 74 Tranfaglia, La stampa del regime, pp. 15–16. 75 Bruno Maida, ‘La Direzione generale della stampa italiana, in La stampa del regime,

ed. by Nicola Tranfaglia, p. 39. 76 Ibid., p. 43.

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and journalists. Repression increased for newspapers that ignored the official recommendations while unofficial finance was available for journalists and trusted newspapers.77 Maida concentrates on the complex nature of the project that Fascism wanted to realise with regard to terms of consent and repression. The system of censorship through the use of veline was successful also due to the mechanisms of self-censorship that it set in motion, in particular regarding the image that both the Duce and the regime wanted to show to the world.78 Limits were imposed on reporting and attention was paid to the style, impagination and selection of photographs for newspapers. According to a document, Rinnovare il giornale, by Polverelli in late 1932, photographs should always be considered for political effect.79 For example, photos of crowds with too many spaces should be discarded, as with images of streets and monuments that appeared disordered.80 To conclude this brief overview regarding the mechanisms of censorship behind prohibited images, or those preventively included or excluded, it is interesting to note that the accepted practice that all the instructions were sent to newspapers directly from the Duce needs to be verified. Mussolini’s well known and much advertised interest in the press was certain. Nevertheless, the idea that he could read all the newspapers before his regular meetings with the Minister of Popular Culture should also be questioned. Indeed, instructions to the press became so frequent and regular, up to seven a day during the Civil War in Spain, that it would have been impractical for anybody to have processed all the paperwork alone.81 In general, instructions for the press had become routine although Maida cautions that it would be excessive to suggest that there was no margin at all for initiative on behalf of editors and journalists. Paolo Murialdi explains that Mussolini’s dissatisfaction with the lack of discipline by editors and journalists was not due to fear of anti-Fascism but rather to

77 Ibid., p. 52. 78 Ibid., p. 51. 79 Ibid., p. 52. 80 Acs, Minculpop, Gabinetto, b.4, fasc.15 ‘Ufficio Stampa del Capo del Governo. Varie’. 81 Maida, ‘La Direzione generale della stampa italiana, in La stampa del regime, ed. by

Tranfaglia, p. 53.

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the knowledge that newspapers were only made and published if they could sell the news.82 In terms of frequency, the Duce photographed alone was the second thematic portrayal. It represents 11% of the examined sample. Contrary to biographies, where the type ‘alone’ was used more frequently, the isolated figure in press photographs was relatively rare. Mainly appearing in the last phase of the set chronological criteria, and thus during the most aggressively military phase of Fascism as Italy entered the war, photographs of the Duce alone show him in uniform, sometimes close to objects or devices associated with patriotism, such as a flag, or framed near historically potent symbols such as a rostrum in the shape of fasces, or in profile and in a helmet making the Fascist salute. These press images projected power, authority, control and active leadership. Examples of this type of image management can be summarised in a poignant image published on the Sunday morning edition of 1 September 1935, where on the front page three images of the Duce alone show him during one of many rallies, in this case in Trento. The central image showed him from the waist up, in profile on a rostrum made of wood and shaped as a fasces, this being one of the many ephemeral architectural elements transmitted to us through photography. The Duce smiling and making the Fascist salute. Cropping as part of editorial manipulation was an effective visual strategy. As Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy argue, ‘careful crafting of image is important because images tap into shared values and culturally resonant themes that form the basis of affective attachments on which evaluations of public figures often rest’.83 Three years later, on 3 July 1938, a front-page photograph was published under a large title in block capitals ‘Almeno 70 milioni di quintali di ottimo grano’ (at least 350 thousand tons of excellent grain), a title somewhat discordant as the Duce alone was piloting an aeroplane, an S.81. Portrayed in flying kit and leather helmet, close up and in profile, the Duce’s expression is one of concentration. His face is not retouched to make him appear younger and he looks to the horizon, as if

82 Paolo Murialdi, Le veline del ventennio, type-written script from a television programme in four episodes on RAI 2 (20 and 27 July—10 and 17 August 1984), p. 4; Maida, ‘La Direzione generale della stampa italiana, in La stampa del regime, ed. by Nicola Tranfaglia, p. 53. 83 Grabe and Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics, p. 87.

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Fig. 8.18 Left, Corriere della Sera 28 March 1939, Mussolini as aviator. The postcard has no date but seems to have been taken some years earlier

to create the image of a hero capable of leading the nation. The representation of the ruler as heroic, indeed superhuman, established in classical antiquity through statues, sometimes colossal, and monuments that were triumphalist in style,84 was in this photographic representation of the Duce as aviator, translated into a modern press image. It was adapted to an age where newspaper photography provided the ideal illustrative platform to enhance personality and influence events (Fig. 8.18). From the mid-1930s, the increased frequency of Mussolini’s presence in the daily press placed him as the subject of an evolving style of photojournalism and a modern image culture. The regularity of Mussolini’s appearance was divergent from that of the king, possibly because the daily press was not considered an appropriate medium for the circulation of the royal image.

84 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 67.

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It is now necessary to verify whether the underrepresentation of the king’s image in the daily press was also reflected in periodicals and illustrated magazines, such as L’Illustrazione Italiana or La Domenica del Corriere.

Periodicals: L ’Illustrazione Italiana, La Domenica Del Corriere, Tempo Contrary to Corriere della Sera, and newspapers in general, magazines published plenty of images. In the 1930s, publishing underwent an important process of technological modernisation and growth, during which the industry, which was based on artisanal methods of production and small family firms, started to develop along modern lines on a par with other industries in Italy. This brought an emphasis on larger publishers, cheaper distribution and the development of advertising.85 In Italy, the first image reproduced directly from a photograph using a photomechanical procedure was published in 1896 in L’Illustrazione Italiana,86 a weekly magazine that mainly reported national and international events through photographs.87 Founded by Emilio Treves in 1873 in Milan and modernised in the 1930s with rotogravure printing, which allowed high-quality, fine-mesh reproduction of photographs,88 L’Illustrazione Italiana proposed an alternative form of journalism, where photographs, instead of being considered as auxiliary tools in support of text, became central and a direct vehicle of information, reducing the commentary to captions.89 Initially, photographs with their inherent realism had to compete with drawings, which were considered more appropriate to reflect the symbolic and lyrical content of events.90

85 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 97. 86 Paccagnini, ‘Dal primo al secondo conflitto mondiale’, in Storia del Giornalismo

Italiano, ed. by Farinelli and others, p. 205 (footnote 65). 87 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 47. 88 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 36. 89 Gozzini, Storia del giornalismo, p. 213. 90 Carlotti, ‘Incisione e/o fotografia. L’Illustrazione Italiana, in Fotografia e fotografi,

ed. by Carlotti, p. 52.

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Presenting the lives of royals and other notable public figures, such as politicians, in an engaging and seductive manner, L’Illustrazione Italiana aimed at appealing to the middle as well as the upper classes. The target audience and the abundance of photographs make L’Illustrazione Italiana especially relevant to a study of the representation in the press of Mussolini in comparison with the king. Both the king and the royal family were frequently photographed and reproduced in this periodical, before and after Mussolini came to power, and the incidence of their visibility remained steady throughout the regime, with a consistent number of photographs portraying royals attending official ceremonies. Certain events saw members of the Savoy family in the spotlight, resulting in peaks of greater coverage and popular dissemination of the celebrity image, for example the royal wedding between Prince Umberto of Savoy and Princess Maria José of Belgium in January 1930. This was extensively covered in L’Illustrazione Italiana. An entire issue was dedicated to their wedding with full-page images and large official portraits, which evoked the magical allure of the occasion. Further photographs of the newly wedded couple dominated the three successive issues, until interest was later replaced by another couple, this time representing the Fascist elite, Count Galeazzo Ciano and Edda the daughter of Mussolini, who married on 24 April 1930 in a lavish ceremony attended by 4000 guests. Photographs showing Victor Emmanuel III alone or with others were reproduced fairly consistently throughout the regime, especially in the early years. For example, in 1922, the king appeared on the cover of 19 March, then 6 times on various pages throughout April and again 4 times in May—then in September on the inside cover, as the first in a series of images from a ceremony. A photograph of Mussolini as newly appointed prime minister appeared on the cover of issue of 5 November 1922 marked the beginning of a change in the representation of the king and the Royal family. From then on, they were no longer the most visible state personages. ‘Presidente del nuovo Governo nel quale ha assunto il Ministero degli Interni e l’interim degli Esteri’ (Prime Minister of the new Government he is also Home and Foreign Office Minister) was a full-page portrait photograph where Mussolini was charismatically portrayed against a dark background, the contrast between dark clothes and white collar drawing the eye to the subject’s face as he looks down on a paper he holds up to read. It was a sophisticated composition that concentrated on the essence of the gesture. The photographer seems to have followed conventional

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composition theory derived from pictorial tradition with the intention of emphasising the facial features through a considered use of contrast that reduced Mussolini’s body and the background to formal masses with no detail.91 Objects and accoutrements, even though minimal, act as symbols; the paper and the formal dress associated with his work suggest the image of the learned man or cleric. Both the formal dress and pose, in line with conventional representation, seem to construct a narrative in contrast to the restless nature and clamour of the Fascist Revolution. Mussolini’s depiction as a conservative politician should be seen in the context of the L’llustrazione Italiana readership that was at ease with values of respectability, politeness and civility. Photographs could be crafted to communicate reassuring content. Although on page three of the issue of 12 November 1922, there is a series of photographs that show the newly appointed prime minister meeting the king in Rome, with one image in particular of Mussolini shaking hands with the latter where he bows slightly but deferentially, this was a turning point in the relationship of the press with the two personalities. From this issue onwards, the visual coverage of the king and Mussolini changed. The presence of Victor Emmanuel III in the printed media appeared to be progressively eclipsed by that of the Duce. The comparative analysis of their coverage in the printed media can suggest whether the differences in visual representation reflected an antagonism, or was the consequence of a precise strategy. The sample of L’Illustrazione Italiana, selected for analysis, covers four separate three-week periods for each year. In 1922, 1925 and 1929, there were four times as many photographs of the Duce as there were of the Duce with the king. For these three years, most of Mussolini’s images were of the type Duce ‘alone’ and a few of the Duce ‘with people’. Iconographically, the periodical seems to have favoured images, at least until the 1930s, of Mussolini where he was formally dressed in hat and coat, framed from three-quarters, with quite a few close-ups, and over all with images corresponding to the type ‘Duce as politician’, at least until 1930s. There was a variety of types of images, as Duce with his typical imperial poses and surly look, but the general impression when looking at large numbers of photographs, as a whole sequence, is that the visual material selected, sent or edited for the L’Illustrazione Italiana could appeal to a 91 Giovanna Ginex, ed., Divine. Emilio Sommariva fotografo. Opere scelte 1910-1930 (Milan: Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, 2004), pp. 13–37.

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Fig. 8.19 Left, this image reproduced as a postcard was taken by Attilio Badodi and also, right, published in L’Illustrazione Italiana at the end of 1925

conservative audience through a photographic repertoire that was edited and framed to convey a refined allure (Fig. 8.19). To compensate for the uniformity of content, the press paid more attention to graphic and photographic forms of presentation.92 The cover of the issue of 4 February 1923 showed a photograph by R. Ugolini of Mussolini on horseback in bowler hat and riding clothes, which graphically forms a combination of dark masses, with him in black on the dark silhouette of the animal filling half of the page (Fig. 8.20). This visually conveyed a powerful presence although very distant from that of a mounted Condottiero and closer to the representation of a gentleman.

92 Paccagnini, ‘Dal primo al secondo conflitto mondiale’, in Storia del Giornalismo Italiano, ed. by Farinelli and others, p. 290.

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Fig. 8.20 L’Illustrazione Italiana 4 February 1923. The caption reads ‘The Prime Minister’s morning ride’ (photo R. Ugolini) (Chronicle/Alamy Stock photo)

According to the tone chosen, the pitch of the story, the presentation, how it was edited or accompanied with different textual fonts and titles, Mussolini’s image could convey different meanings. A brief comparison with La Domenica del Corriere can help illustrate the difference in style. L’Illustrazione Italiana was successful, widely subscribed to among the bourgeoisie, and as other illustrated magazines, possibly passed from hand to hand.93 Even though it may have been read in a collective form, through its elitist content it remained exclusive. Conversely, it was through the sports press, for example La Gazzetta dello Sport , comics such as Il Corriere dei Piccoli, and illustrated magazines of a popular tone like La Domenica del Corriere, that both publishing and Fascism gained a more extended mass reading public. The ‘rotocalchizzazione’ (spread of rotogravure process) enabled the press to reach the masses, 21% of which could not read and 48% resided in the South and had never been to school. This was a large portion of the nation which both the publishing 93 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 37.

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industry and Fascism were interested in engaging.94 New journalistic products, such as magazines or illustrated supplements, aimed to engage with differing social classes, but also served to attract a greater publicity income that was necessary to meet the elevated costs of reproducing photographs in the printed media.95 La Domenica Del Corriere One of the characteristics of La Domenica del Corriere, a very popular illustrated periodical which sold over a million copies a week throughout the Ventennio,96 was the cover, which always featured a drawing based on a photograph by Achille Beltrame. Through highly symbolic pictorial language, the periodical’s front cover rendered reality more persuasive and dramatic for the masses. Among the subjects were the Duce, the king and the two men together. A cover from 20 August 1933 shows the Duce in a jacket and hat assisting a farm labourer working on a threshing machine with a ‘Viva il Duce’ (long live the Duce) banner attached to the side. The next summer the Duce as a farmer was portrayed on the cover on 22 July 1934, intent on working with great speed for ‘three hours’ according to the caption, this time dressed in a shirt and surrounded by other workers. Images showing the Duce as a man of the people in a rural setting were alternated with those of the king on a cover of 23 September 1934, who was portrayed surrounded by his family in an informal moment on a garden swing. The same year on 7 October a large centre page titled ‘The Duce amongst the people’ was illustrated with heavily cropped and edited photographs where Mussolini was shown in a sequence of jauntily juxtaposed images in different shaped cut outs. These enhance the sense of his fraternising with the everyday people as he talks to them face to face, making eye contact, touching and finally, in a cut out and cropped

94 Paccagnini, ‘Dal primo al secondo conflitto mondiale’, in Storia del Giornalismo Italiano, ed. by Farinelli and others, p. 292. 95 Carlotti, ‘Incisione e/o fotografia. L’Illustrazione Italiana’, in Fotografia e fotografi, ed. by Carlotti, p. 52. 96 The periodical averaged a million copies a week, with the high points of weekly sales being 1924 with 281,694 and 1936 with 1,451,080 and finally in 1942, 1,697,495, in Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera, Diffusione e Vendita, f.21, “Tirature Domenica del Corriere”.

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image entitled ‘bacione ad un Balilla’ (kissing a Balilla) he leans forward to kiss a child (Fig. 8.21). On a striking cover from 1936, Beltrame offset photographic realism and mythological representation with the helmeted Duce in the foreground, depicted with jutting jaw, deep-set eyes, showing his renowned profile with behind him the ghostly presence of a helmeted Roman warrior who presents an identical profile, suggesting Mussolini as the legitimate heir of that glorious empire. A similar construction with the profile of Mussolini was used for the cover of an issue from 16 May 1937, but this time it was Victor Emmanuel III in the foreground whose diminutive scale was emphasised by the Duce’s powerful presence. Overall, Mussolini’s spatial dominance of the page layout became more exaggerated as time progressed. It was particularly visible on another

Fig. 8.21 Below, La Domenica del Corriere, 1934. A series of images of the Duce among the people. The cut-out image of Mussolini with a young child, ‘Bacio ad un Balilla’ (kissing a Balilla), was a common theme and often reproduced

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cover from 17 July 1938 where he can be seen shirtless with his recognisable physical features emphasised by Beltrame’s accurate rendering of an original photograph. Returning to L’Illustrazione Italiana from the mid-1930s, when Mussolini held the supreme military rank of First Marshal of the Empire along with King Victor Emmanuel III, the trend of visibility changed noticeably. In 1934, images of the Duce were six times more frequent than those of the Duce with the king, and even images of the Duce with Hitler were twice as many as those of the Duce with the king. This trend was also evident when considering the full-page illustrations on the inside covers from 1922, 1924, 1925, 1930 and in 1934 when the original dust jacket was replaced with an illustrated front cover. To summarise the trend, in 1922, six per cent of the images were of the king and 4% of Mussolini of the ‘politician’ type. Two years later, in 1924, the visibility of the king slightly increased to 8% but Mussolini had risen to 14% with a more varied representation, still including images of him as a politician but also as Duce ‘alone’, ‘with people’ and even one with an ‘oceanic crowd’. In 1925, the king was still present in 8 per cent of the issues but Mussolini had increased to 18%, with more images of him with people and in front of large crowds. In 1930, the king’s presence on the inside covers had fallen to 3% alone and 2% with Mussolini, who by then was present in 42% of the remaining issues, 20% as Duce with people, 9% in front of a large crowd, with the remainder as a politician or Duce alone. In 1934, the king together with Mussolini was in 4 per cent of issues, the same as the representation of Mussolini with Hitler. The king was shown alone in 4% while Mussolini was in 25% of the issues. In 1934, the types of images of Mussolini were largely similar to those of 1930 although there were no images of him as a politician and more of those that evoked his presence. In summary, at the beginning of the period reviewed, in 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III had one and half times more photographic coverage in L’Illustrazione Italiana than Mussolini. By the 1930s, there was a significant reversal of this weighting and there were five illustrations of Mussolini for every one of the king. In the architecture of power, the king appeared as the figure who above all others was engaged, as was the Duce, in ‘parading their charges before the press and if they could control the access and direct the image

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Fig. 8.22 The front cover of L’Illustrazione Italiana, 26 August 1934. This image of the king and Mussolini taken when on manoeuvres in 1933 was often reproduced on differing bases including as a postcard from 1936

so much the better’97 (Fig. 8.22). Rather than two powerful men in competition for visual space aspiring to maximum visibility, the Victor 97 Roger Hargreaves, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street (London: National Portrait Gallery) published to accompany the exhibition “Daily Encounters” held at the National Portrait Gallery, London (July–October 2007), p. 58.

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Emmanuel III and the Duce in photographs appeared as having had contemporarily access to the photo-opportunity which they both understood, accepted and encouraged as part of public life. Dynamic, populist and seemingly in continuous evolution, the ubiquity of Mussolini’s image, supported by words and actions, occupied all the visible realms of politics and contributed to the myth of his power.98 The visual dualism of the Duce with or without the king poses questions about his image management. We know little about the extent of autonomy given to institutions, entities and individuals when choosing from authorised photographs for publication. The images made available to the public can assist to further understand the criteria for selection. There is a particularly interesting issue of another popular illustrated magazine that can help identify the repertoire of photographs considered most suitable to represent Mussolini and which embodied the nature of his representation in this kind of media. Tempo founded by Arnoldo Mondadori in 1939, and graphically edited by Bruno Munari, was the first illustrated magazine systematically to use photography. Modelled on the American weekly Life, it sourced images directly from freelance photographers, such as Giuseppe Pagano, government-approved picture agencies, such as LUCE and API, and foreign suppliers like Keystone and the Associated Press.99 The issue of 26 October 1939 is of particular interest. It featured a section devoted to seventeen years of Fascism through a series of forty-five photographs spread over seven pages celebrating the salient moments of Fascism and the career of Mussolini. Evident on every page were images of crowds or groups of people, constructing, marching, busily achieving, interspersed by images of Mussolini with others and occasionally alone. This subtle juxtaposition of images gave the impression of collective national endeavour while underlining the dominant presence of Mussolini. He featured in half of the images, thus reflecting the typical composition of periodicals and the press. The overall reading of this ‘photograph album’ (the pages are made up of nine images each accompanied by a caption) would have been reassuringly familiar. There are no unexpected images and editorial intervention for individual photographs seems minimal. The composition of the page

98 Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 86. 99 Carlotti, ‘Nasce Tempo “nello stile”’, in Fotografia e fotografi, ed. by Carlotti, p. 112.

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was highly regulated with a balance of events and crowds carefully placed around images of Mussolini. He is depicted smiling triumphantly; walking in a black shirt or white suit greeted by farmers; wearing a fez, laying a foundation stone; or speaking from a balcony; then stripped to the waist harvesting, or on horseback brandishing a sword; and finally staring towards the horizon as the solitary leader. The overall impression is one of order and achievement. While the five images of the Duce ‘alone’ occupy important positions in the layout, mainly central and top of the page, these were always surrounded by many more images with people or crowds. A composition criterion reflected in the sample of publications analysed. To establish more precisely the link in this carefully constructed photographic album which connected the images of public events with those more individual and personal of Mussolini, we should ideally know whether editorial decisions were made solely on the basis of Mussolini’s instructions or as part of more complex collective initiatives involving multiple agents. Most of these forty-five images were previously published and authorised, then held in the newspaper archive. What is not certain is the extent of Mussolini’s input regarding their selection and presentation for this publication. However, given what has been established concerning the editorial process, it is plausible to infer that within the production of a highly controlled process, some interpretation may have been granted to the editors if not for the type of images at least for the layout. Insofar as different ways of displaying images and objects in galleries can affect ways of seeing and interpreting, in this instance the page layout allowed for a variety of interpretations. The ‘photo-album’ of Mussolini in Tempo followed a very schematic and homogenous layout. All photographs are numbered, accompanied by identical captions in length and evenly spaced (Fig. 8.23). The eye was led through the progression of images in a precise order where everything was clearly marked and explained with no room for interpretation. Finally, at the end of the photograph album, the reader is confronted face to face with the leader; a striking full-page portrait of Mussolini concludes the sequence layout (Fig. 8.24). All the typical features of his facial visual shorthand are present: strong jaw, shaved head and staring eyes, although, in 1939 at the outbreak of war, he is in a jacket, shirt and tie, with no military reference. As a representation, this was not a portrait of a god, or an emperor, or even a condottiero but a political leader who

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Fig. 8.23 On 26 October 1939, Tempo, an illustrated periodical, published an article celebrating 17 years of Fascism. Above is the reproduction of a complete page which documents the centrality of Mussolini’s image in the composition

looks pensively into the distance, a man with vision who could be trusted as having the interests of the people as his prime concern. The visual presence of the Duce in the media was pervasive, and in individual as well as group photographs, it nearly always occupied a dominant position. He shared with other public figures the use of images as an element in the construction of power. Possibly due to the influence of cinema and radio, the developing modern image culture and new styles of journalism, gradually became more impressive through an increased use of photographs. The public visual dimension of Mussolini in photographs was not always exclusive. His press images were sometimes supported by those of ministers, Fascist and military officials, royals, aristocrats and clerics. Actors, actresses and models posing in advertisements would also appear in proximity, sometimes on the opposite page. Even his own daughter, next to images of country women, the massaie rurali (peasant women), appeared with a sophisticated air as a specular female counterpart of her father. Photographs of Mussolini thus were not seen in

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Fig. 8.24 Benito Mussolini full-page colour illustration, Tempo, 26 October 1939

isolation but were part of the visual and social context and were influenced by new forms of communication.

CHAPTER 9

Mussolini’s Early Photographs

Visibility in Context A recurrent point stressed by historians when discussing Mussolini’s photographic image is its pervasiveness. In written or visually illustrated accounts of his representation, the dominant and capillary presence of photographs is invariably underlined to suggest the diffusion of his image on a mass scale. The ubiquitous photographic representation of Mussolini in both public and private spaces is documented by written impressions of his contemporaries. A report written in 1929 by a French journalist informs us that: Mussolini is everywhere, his name and his likeness, his gestures and his words, even more than Kemal Ataturk or Lenin. Open any newspaper and there you can find with comments and praises genial speeches by the Duce. A shop shows a great man framed by flowers and autographs. Whichever way you look or turn you find Mussolini, Mussolini and again Mussolini.1

In another hagiographic account from the Fascist art historian Francesco Sapori, the dissemination of the Duce’s images was even more exaggerated: 1 Henri Beraud, Ce que j’ai vu a Rome (Paris: Les éditions de France, 1929), in Mussolini grande attore, ed. by Camillo Berneri (Pistoia: Achivio Famiglia Berneri, 1983), pp. 42–43, in Il duce proibito. Le fotografie di Mussolini che gli italiani non hanno mai visto, eds. by Franzinelli and Marino (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), p. XI.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_9

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There are thousands of the Duce’s portraits. The overall number is unbelievable, and almost impossible to count. […] the number produced through modern technology allows the Duce’s images to cross the ocean, showing him to Italians all over the world as well as to races of all colours who together have an endless appetite to know of his exploits.2

On the contrary, in a report of 1932 by the journalist Émile Schreiber, who arrived in Rome from the USSR, the visibility of the Duce was put into a different perspective: What does the tourist see of the Fascist regime? Not much. The occasional effigies of Mussolini, stenciled on various city walls, are by now fading. His portraits are only visible in the interiors of public and private spaces […] and, as for these, only in a few!3

This was an opposite observation that was perhaps provoked by the comparison with Stalin’s propaganda and the lasting impression that this had on the author. These examples of differing impressions of the Duce’s visibility show how ambiguous and polysemic images can be, as their message varies according to the viewer and the variety of functions these were made to perform. Photographs of the Duce were made in order to perform a political function and played a part in the ‘cultural construction’ of society.4 What is worth noting is not so much the impression of the Duce’s pervasive presence, but rather the contrasting perceptions regarding the diffusion of his image when put in context and quantified. Accepted notions about images of the Duce need to be questioned, in order to ascertain, as Peter Burke suggests, ‘who was telling the story to whom in this way, and what their intentions may have been in so doing’.5 Focusing on postcards supported by a series of statistics, Enrico Sturani demonstrates that Mussolini’s pervasive image in this medium can be differently perceived when compared with various editions or periods, and the targeted audiences that these were made for. For

2 Francesco Sapori, L’arte e il Duce (Milan: Mondadori, 1932), p. 135. 3 Schreiber E, Rome après Moscou (Paris: Plon, 1932), p. 6, in Enrico Sturani, Le

cartoline per il Duce, (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), p. 32. 4 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 185. 5 Ibid., p. 154.

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example, Mussolini’s presence in postcards produced for military purposes or during heavily advertised events, such as the Africa campaign, was not as high as one would expect. Conversely, Mussolini’s image was frequently reproduced for productions for the private sector and was a dominant subject for editions such as school exercise-book covers. Although the use of Mussolini’s image increased during the last five years of the regime, his diffused image should be considered against those of powerful institutions such as the royal family for example, who were also present on postcards during the twenty years of the Fascist regime. Not to dispute the idea of the capillary diffusion of Mussolini’s image, rather, it is necessary to underline that the ‘bulimic relationship’6 attributed to Mussolini with his own image, if put in context and not seen in isolation, becomes part of a process, as stated by Lucy Riall when discussing the personality cult of Garibaldi, of ‘political and cultural modernisation helped by the developing mass communication’.7 The pervasive and obsessive use of images of the Duce and their production on an industrial scale must be considered within the framework of the political, technological and social context of early twentiethcentury Italy, with particular emphasis on the role that the press played in the creation of Mussolini as a political leader. Mussolini’s celebrity status in the 1930s was not an overnight happening but can be assumed as the result of a political strategy which started during the early phase of his political career, when he was not yet the primary commissioner of his own photographic representation.

Press, Power and Politics From 1912, and more decisively from the early 1920s, the photographs of Mussolini as a journalist, soldier and activist celebrate the extreme accentuation of his individuality as an incarnation of ideas and values. The key factor that determined the shift from personal use of photographs to a wider and targeted deployment of his image was the reproduction of photographs in the press. The analysis and meaning of Mussolini’s photographs on the road to power depend on their social context, that 6 Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 21. 7 Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 3.

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is, in a broader sense the general cultural and political background in which his images were commissioned, and more specifically, their material context or the circumstances and physical location in which his photographs were originally intended to be seen.8 The history of the images of Mussolini in politics at the beginning of the twentieth century is closely connected to the relation between press, power and politics. Added to this, the technological development of the reproduction of images in the press and the increased visibility of personalities in the printed papers were also important factors in influencing Mussolini’s awareness of the role of his image in the eyes of the viewer. An overview of the cultural and political situation at the time of Mussolini’s first photographs is useful to understand the point of departure in order to monitor the development of the use of his photographic image. Modernisation proceeded at different speeds in Italy, more quickly where the dominant power of the Church was limited. The introduction of compulsory education introduced in 1877 contrasted with the delayed introduction of universal suffrage for men which did not take place until 1912.9 The press, left to private initiative, was characterised by the pedagogical approach inherited from the Risorgimento, which resulted in its persistent political vocation, to the detriment of the commercialisation of information, which in other countries led to a more popular tone and wider circulation. The Italian press, whose journalists were often either politicians or men of letters, was fragmented and operated at a regional scale, thus hindering the growth of distribution.10 Corriere della Sera, founded in 1876 in Milan, acted as a model of innovation at a national level. In contrast to the political bias of the other Italian papers, it aimed at satisfying the need for much better information that not necessarily linked to political patronage. The intention, though, did not bring the expected commercial success, which was only achieved after a group of industrialists including Crespi, De Angeli and Pirelli injected a consistent amount of funding through shares, setting up an ‘impure’ editorial system with prominent interests in the productive and industrial sectors, a structure that would characterise the future Italian press and exacerbate the

8 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 178. 9 In 1925 women in Italy gained the right to vote, though it was limited to local

elections. In 1945 women in Italy gained full suffrage. 10 Giovanni Gozzini, Storia del giornalismo (Milan: Mondadori, 2000), p. 183.

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political division among newspapers.11 When circulation increased at the beginning of the century, the market for advertising expanded and with it an innovative form of journalistic prose developed that was more simplified and accessible. The editorial staff grew and a new role was created, the ‘caporedattore’, or editor-in-chief whose tasks ranged from reviewing agency dispatches and selecting articles to composing headlines. Stefani, the first modern press agency in Italy, was founded in 1853 and made a name for itself as the principal agency serving the national press. The only government-licensed agency, it had a guaranteed exclusive coverage of events, and although ‘independent’ was an atypical enterprise, responsible for the diffusion of official government dispatches during the First World War. From 1920, Stefani also communicated government news to the press and prefetture.12 Italian journalists, unlike their foreign colleagues, had no proper training, learning their trade on the job and rising through the ranks as opportunities arose. In this respect, Mussolini shared a similar early career path with no particular professional or university qualification, and yet having a successful career as a journalist and comparatively quickly becoming editor of a national daily newspaper before forming his own.

Mussolini at 14 The origins, nature and development of the way Mussolini used images to create, diffuse and enhance his cult, and to what extent the exploiting of his image differed from his predecessors, are the object of the following discussion. Mussolini’s celebrated vocation for command has been attributed to him from an early age, partly due to his posture and expression in an early portrait, a pose which would later become instantly recognisable and typical of the Mussolini ‘brand’ (Fig. 9.1). In the Forlimpopoli Scuola Magistrale (Teaching Institute) class photograph from 1897,13 the adolescent Mussolini’s expression is typical of that associated with the future dictator, with an imperious glower and arrogant stance, taken from waist up with his chin raised, piercing eyes, 11 Ibid., p. 188. 12 Mauro Forno, La stampa del ventennio. Strutture e trasformazioni nello stato

totalitario (Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2005), p. 198. 13 Maurizio Ridolfi e Franco Moschi, edited by, Il giovane Mussolini 1883–1914 (Forlì: Neri Wolff, 2013), catalogue of the exhibition, p. 102.

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Fig. 9.1 Postcard from 1922 of Mussolini at 14

arms folded, his body offset, with his head tilted slightly backwards and looking straight down at the camera. Repeatedly used by the regime as demonstrating the innate character of a man born to be leader, this image of Mussolini at fourteen posing for the school photographer was reproduced in many publications during the ventennio as well as on book covers, postcards or in an exhibition catalogue and also published on differing photographic bases. For example, it was sold as a postcard from

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1923 for one lire in support of Opera Nazionale Balilla and Opera di Previdenza delle Camicie Nere,14 or in a book from 1938 for the Italian Youth with information about Mussolini’s family tree.15 As photography lends itself to serial documentation and is the infinitely reproducible medium par excellence, its multiple usages can change the meaning and possible interpretation of an image. Without providing any indication of its origins, the sole purpose of the continual use of this image of Mussolini at fourteen seems to have been to demonstrate from an early age that he was a determined and no-nonsense character, a budding dictator. Roland Barthes observes a ‘photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated’ since the referent adheres.16 Images, when removed from their specific context, could thus acquire a life of their own and signify abstract concepts such as ‘leadership’. Mussolini’s attitude to command, seen as an inherent trait of his personality, could be rendered particularly well through the recycling of selected images functioning as relics that could affect the experience of seeing. When reading literally these symbolic images, which through repetitive use acquired a level of autonomy, what could be seen was the referent, the ‘desired object, the beloved body’.17 Through this type of editorial process, Mussolini’s image could be read as a confirmation of his attitude from an early age which together with his physicality ‘proved’ he was in all effects ‘il capo’ (the boss). In a celebratory account by Heinz Holldack, Mussolini’s attitude at fourteen in front of the camera was interpreted as the unequivocal sign of that particular characteristic of his nature that would eventually, according to Holldack, dominate his entire personality, namely ‘absolute sense of

14 Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB) was an Italian Fascist youth organisation functioning between 1926 and 1937, when it was absorbed into the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL), a youth section of the National Fascist Party. Opera di Previdenza delle Camicie Nere was a Fascist Party welfare organisation. 15 Edoardo Tedeschi, La giovinezza del Duce, libro per la gioventù italiana con notizie

crono genealogiche sul casato dei Mussolini, Forlì 11 December 1938; the image of Mussolini at fourteen was also reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, ed. by Dino Alfieri and Luigi Freddi (Rome: Catalogue Partito Nazionale Fascista, 1933). 16 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 6. 17 Ibid., p. 7.

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self-sacrifice’.18 Mussolini since an early age was someone who ‘presents himself as he would be seen’, a trait of his personality which ‘in that portrait is revealed with a singular intensity’. Mussolini, and the veracity attributed to photography could confirm this, was a ‘boss [who] appeared on a daily basis as the teacher of the people’, as Fascism aspired ‘to shape the new Italian, and Mussolini dedicated completely to this didactic initiative’.19 The assumption of Mussolini’s inherent leadership abilities corroborated by the ‘evidence’ of the photograph stems from the intricate connections between biography and portraiture.20 Evidence in Giorgio Pini’s Filo Diretto con Palazzo Venezia reveals the importance Mussolini attached to portraits of himself when young. Pini’s experience as editor-in-chief of Il Popolo d’Italia, from 1936 until 1943, is recorded in the notes he made of the more than 300 hundred telephone conversations with Mussolini collected in Filo Diretto. The importance he gave to the selection of photographs to be published in his newspaper, as well as those from his family album or of him as a young man, is clear. Throughout his book, Pini makes reference to Mussolini’s ‘image management’,21 and on more than one occasion, he was stopped by Mussolini from publishing a photograph of him with his wife and daughter Anna at Carpena,22 while he was granted permission to publish a photograph of Mussolini from the March on Rome on the condition that Pini would specify the date to avoid any misunderstanding about his age.23 From the point of view of the public, portraits were (and still are) objects of emulation, as the likeness of particular individuals was (and still is) deemed to be inspiring.24 According to Ludmilla Jordanova, in her analysis of portraits of a specific category of people, namely scientists, ‘provided you knew, or thought you knew who you were looking at, the 18 Heinz Holldack, ‘Il Duce’, Freunde und Arbeit, 1937, special Italian issue quoted in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 114. 19 Ibid., p. 114. 20 Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660–2000

(London: Reaktion Books, 2000), p. 79. 21 This expression is used by Peter Burke in his analysis on visual propaganda, see Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 72 and p. 77. 22 Giorgio Pini, Filo Diretto con Palazzo Venezia (Bologna: Cappelli, 1950), p. 161. 23 Ibid., p. 168. 24 Jordanova, Defining Features, p. 79.

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face and sometimes the body could be quite sufficient. This is because most people subscribe, and ‘have done so for centuries, to assumptions about the visibility of character in the face’.25 One of the cultural operations that the portrait performs is to make abstract domains that are difficult to grasp, more accessible when we give them human form.26 A standardised and qualitatively mediocre portrait, such as the one of Mussolini at fourteen, contributed to the cult of personality of the Duce through its use and consumption and for what it has represented rather than for what originally it was meant to be. According to current conventions of visual representation, rather than intuitive reading, it is necessary to focus on the social context and practice in which this photograph was made, which, in this particular instance, was a portrait generated within an institution.27 Photographs of individual students, such as the portrait of Mussolini, were designed to be exemplary, and intended to inspire others to work hard, to achieve and prompt admiration or pride in the viewer. To produce visually satisfying results, the posture and gesture followed a pattern that presents young Mussolini in a particular way which was usually highly controlled.28 The ritualisation of the institutionalised portrait was aimed at the representation of a universal standard of decorum with the subject reflecting a model of submission, dignity and pliability. In 1897, at the time of Mussolini’s school photograph, the conventional and static posture was also imposed by technical limitations, and, although after 1880 the discovery of plates prepared with gelatin and silver bromide made it easier for photographers to work outside the studio, the length of exposure required the model to be immobile with photographers having a limited expressive range when photographing the subject.29

25 Ibid., p. 80. 26 Ibid., p. 70. 27 Ibid., p. 134. 28 Ibid., p. 134. 29 Michele Falzone del Barbarò, ‘Gli atelier: grandezza e decadenza di uno spazio fotografico’, in Un secolo di ritratto fotografico in Italia 1895/1995, ed. by Italo Zannier (Florence: Alinari, 1995), pp. 41–43.

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Group or individual photographs taken for institutions were meant to be public in that they were seen by anyone who frequented the organisation in question. Even if the community of a provincial school was relatively small, it would have nonetheless constituted a mini-audience, and the photographs of pupils would have probably been realised within a series of larger cultural codes of representation. Even though it is plausible to consider ‘Mussolini at fourteen’ as his first public portrait, still it was a photograph where Mussolini was the subject, not yet the object or commissioner of his own visual representation, and where he and the photographer were not quite yet collaborators or ‘co-conspirators’.30 Therefore, the photographer most likely instructed the young student to assume a standard pose and ‘to fold his arms’, ‘to look up’, ‘to hold his posture firmly’ and perhaps even to assume a positive expression by making a slight smile. Mussolini’s predisposition for performing can be traced back to when he moved to the school in Forlimpopoli where he showed some of the characteristics of a model pupil.31 In 1899 during a local festival, Mussolini was photographed, maybe by one of his teachers, playing the trumpet.32 Eighteen years old in 1901, he achieved some notoriety when selected to represent the school at an event celebrating the memory of the iconic Risorgimento national figure, the composer Giuseppe Verdi. The socialist daily newspaper Avanti! made reference to the event with a three-line comment where the newspaper in a serious tone described the orator as ‘comrade student Mussolini’.33 Portraits realised within institutions, such as schools, enable us to discern those contexts where intellectual achievement and politeness are qualities highly rated. The school photograph of Mussolini was the product of the increased need in the nineteenth-century society to catalogue, record and document. Photography helped diffuse in the collective imagination the possibility of social levelling, as noted by Carlo Brogi, in his 1895 treatise on the portrait:

30 Jordanova, Defining Features, p. 134. 31 Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 52. 32 The photographer who took this early portrait of Mussolini at 14 is unknown, yet

during my research I was able to establish that Angelo Feroci, Mussolini’s teacher of ‘calligraphy and drawing’, was also the school photographer and probably the author of this early portrait. 33 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 52.

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[photography] does not have preferences: the darkroom process, images of both rich and poor women; celebrated artists and café concerts show-girls, the delinquent’s punch and the unknown victim of such cruelty! Photography is available to all, and the only difference between one portrait and another, is a matter of style or method, but the substance remains the same for all. The photographic portrait is as much a part of elegant drawing rooms as of the most humble dwellings.34

A comparative reading between institutional portraits of the time, Mussolini’s school photographs and those available online from Liceo Giuseppe Parini of Milan,35 can help illustrate the visual canons adopted and suggest whether the pose and expression of Mussolini in this portrait are also present in other similar photographs. Curiously, both classphotographs of that period show students in a group but seemingly relaxed, and in different poses that we would now associate more with a bohemian attitude. By contrast, individual portraits of students are more formal. This is obviously a fashion of the time which changed, as can be seen from later images from the 1920s and 1930s, when the poses and clothes were more uniformed and regimented. Mussolini’s early photoportraits as student or politically engagé-emigrant are all about personality. Nevertheless, this photograph needs to be seen in the context of the mini-public for which it was destined. In fact, photographs of Mussolini as a school pupil or a young socialist seem to correspond to the need of the middle class to express social status and a sense of belonging.36 In contrast to the royal portraits, the purpose of these early photographs was mainly private. During Mussolini’s emigrant experience to Switzerland, as a political journalist and activist, a photograph taken in Lausanne in 1904, made by the studio photographer Louis Schmid, has a handwritten dedication to his mother (Fig. 9.2). Mussolini’s photograph shows him sitting with his body slightly turned to the left, his legs crossed and right arm resting on his right leg. Dressed

34 Carlo Brogi, Il ritratto in fotografia: appunti pratici per chi posa, introduction by P. Mantegazza (Florence: Tip. S. Landi, 1895), p. 80. 35 Maurizio Ridolfi and Franco Moschi (eds.), Il giovane Mussolini 1883–1914. La Romagna, la formazione, l’ascesa politica (Forlì: Edizioni Neri Wolff, 2013), pp. 104–117. http://www.liceoparini.org/parini/amarcord/fotoclasse/98-99.htm. 36 Falzone del Barbarò, ‘Gli atelier’, in Un secolo di ritratto, ed. by Italo Zannier, p. 43.

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Fig. 9.2 Mussolini studio photograph taken in Lausanne with a handwritten dedication to his mother in 1904, Louis Schmid photographer, published in various biographies

as a young professional, in wing collar, waistcoat and jacket, with his head turned towards the camera, Mussolini seems to look further with a thoughtful, melancholic expression. Both portraits of Mussolini at fourteen and as an emigrant in Switzerland were reproduced in the biography written by the art critic Margherita

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Sarfatti in 1925, which is widely acknowledged as the ‘first life of Mussolini written with a clear propagandistic intent’,37 and the Fascist journalist Pini’s second version, including all the various translated versions and numerous reprints. However, Pini’s Italian edition of 1927 does not include the portrait at fourteen but reproduced the photograph dedicated to his mother. In the German edition of 1939, both portraits as an adolescent and young adult are absent and were replaced by a photograph which curiously portrays Mussolini, not confident as in the portrait at fourteen, but a child at nursery school looking rather shy and modest. Heavily retouched, the portrait at fourteen is included in Pini’s Italian version of 1940.38 In contrast, Sarfatti’s biography omits Mussolini’s portraits altogether as a child or adolescent but includes, in the English version of 1925, the portrait he sent to his mother from Switzerland.39 These photographs would be consistently selected to accentuate certain characteristics and used later retrospectively in regime-endorsed biographies, or in the press.40 Differing examples of the repetitive use of decontextualised images of Mussolini were published throughout the regime.

On the Frontline A photo taken in 1917 on the front was published in 1932 in the weekly La Domenica del Corriere where ‘Mussolini at war’ appears positioned in the centre of a page of four illustrations depicting various representations that celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the victory by Achille Beltrame.41 Beltrame’s accurate and detailed line drawings based on

37 Simona Storchi, ‘Margherita Sarfatti and the Invention of the Duce’, in The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 40. 38 Giorgio Pini, Mussolini (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1940), pp. 52–53. 39 Margherita Sarfatti, The Life of Benito Mussolini (London: Thornton Butterworth,

1925), p. 16. 40 For example, Sarfatti, The Life of Benito Mussolini; Sarfatti, Dux (Milan: Mondadori, 1926); Pini, Benito Mussolini. La sua vita fino ad oggi dalla strada al potere, 8th ed. (Bologna: Cappelli, 1927). 41 ‘La Guerra vittoriosa: XV Anniversario’, La Domenica del Corriere 12 November 1933, p. 5.

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photographs, which consisted of a mixture of real events and metaphorical representation, led the viewer to associate Mussolini with the audacity and courage of the victorious Italian soldier. An image of Mussolini as a young bersagliere (infantry soldier) taken in 1905 is another example of retrospective use of photographs of his early years reproduced later, for example, on 21 June 1936 to underline his participation in causes of Italian national identity (Figs. 9.3–9.4). The same weekly showed Mussolini alongside General La Marmora as part of a double-page spread celebrating one hundred years of the Bersaglieri, a prestigious infantry

Fig. 9.3 Mussolini as a conscript in 1905 (akg-images/Alamy Stock photo)

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Fig. 9.4 Mussolini alongside General La Marmora for the centenary celebration of the Regiment of Bersaglieri, 21 June 1936 La Domenica del Corriere

regiment. Decontextualisation of Mussolini in photographs allowed for the repetitive use of images and the transmission of a few selected images, which, perhaps considered more iconic than others, occurred in a debased manner years after the original shot was taken. The images that follow belong to the private sphere of Mussolini’s life. The first posed portraits are considered in combination with photographs of royals. These images could be read intuitively and interpreted for their visual content but I suggest that in order to achieve a more complex understanding of how Mussolini employed photography in the 1920s to promote his political agenda, these early photographs of him, viewed alongside those of the royals, should be read not so much in terms of the differences they convey in class, power and wealth, but for the purpose for which they were employed. These four photo-portraits from the beginning of the twentieth century can be ‘contextualised’ since the identity of

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the sitters, and the photographer at least for the portrait of Mussolini is known.42 If we compare Mussolini’s portraits with those of two royals at a young age, King Vittorio Emanuele III at twenty-one (Fig. 9.5) and his son, Umberto of Savoy at thirteen, appear radically different, with regard to their clothes and postures, and yet composed and taken with an intended viewer in mind. Rather than viewing these portraits as accurate representations or mirror images of the subject, the following observations draw mainly from an ideological approach that considers in a broad sense the ‘ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms’43 and through which the postures or gestures of the sitters follow a pattern, often loaded withsymbolic meaning.44 At a first level of reading, the accessories, clothes, postures and expressions born by the subjects in these four portraits reveal and reflect a sense of difference embodied in a ‘series of detailed distinctions that speak of a dense code of social class and individual histories’.45 The contrasting faces show the extension of this separation: Mussolini, ‘eager to command’, the royals ‘calm in their being established’; the sailor suit of the prince in contrast to the institutionalised school blazer of a working-class boy who was brought up with a ‘compelling desire to restore respect and fortune to their family’46 ; the dress uniform of a young king as opposed to the wing collar, waistcoat and jacket of a young professional or intellectual exile through which Mussolini might have sought some compensation for his uneasiness as an emigrant among the Italian Swiss.47 According to Michele Falzone del Barbarò, early studio portraits reflected ‘an emerging social scene’48 of which the most visible sign was represented by the dress. 42 Mussolini photographed in the studio of Louis Schmid, Lausanne, 1904 in Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 29. 43 John B. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), p. 5. 44 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 25. 45 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 111. 46 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 39. 47 Ibid., p. 64. 48 Falzone del Barbarò, ‘Gli atelier’: grandezza e decadenza di uno spazio fotografico’,

in Un secolo di ritratto fotografico in Italia 1895/1995, ed. by Italo Zannier (Florence: Alinari, 1995), pp. 35–43.

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Fig. 9.5 Top clockwise, Mussolini at 14, in Switzerland, King Vittorio Emanuele III at twenty-one 1890, Umberto di Savoia, Crown Prince of Italy, postcards

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Technically, the spatial boundary and limited movement available in the sitting area of the studio, together with the stylistic trend at the beginning of the century that saw a progressive reduction of decorations and props, brought an emphasis on the dress, the composition and the gesture of the subjects.49 In contrast to the dress uniform of the king, Mussolini’s photograph as aspiring bourgeois emphasises middle class’s uniform, ‘the male suit, [which] due to its timeless appeal and its austerity, was similar to a real uniform, as an indicator of bourgeois affinity as an emblem in opposition to traditional aristocratic dress’.50 As photo-portraits of this kind were generally made to appeal to the sympathies of the viewers, we can also assume their purpose.51 They were images modelled on the painted portrait composed according to a system of conventions where postures, gestures, accessories and objects were loaded with symbolic significance.52 They normally presented the sitter in a favourable way and, as in the case of photographs the impulse to view portraits as accurate representations, the viewers were meant to perceive Mussolini, the king, the prince on their best behaviour as mirror images of how they looked in that particular moment. Royal portraits such as these of Vittorio Emanuele III and his son Umberto became effective public-relations tools and at the same time served the purpose of making contact with people by distributing them to the general public not only by means of the press, but also by handing them out in great numbers and directly to individuals or as personal commemorative gifts.53 Mussolini’s early portraits on the other hand were diffused retrospectively with many years passing from being taken to their being made public to a larger audience. In contrast to photographs of young royals, those taken of Mussolini in his youth were not intended for circulation beyond a limited circle. Yet, they would become public artefacts. Their later use was intended to stress the subject’s origins, his suitability for the task of ruling and to bring him closer to the people. Photographs that originally 49 On the evolution of the portrait style, see Giovanna Ginex, Divine. Emilio Sommariva fotografo, opere scelte 1910–1930 (Milan: Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, 2004), pp. 13– 23. 50 Falzone del Barbarò, ‘Gli atelier’, in Un secolo di ritratto, ed. by Italo Zannier, p. 38. 51 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 25. 52 Ibid., p. 25. 53 Alexis Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal Photographs: Emotions for the People, Contemporary

European History, 3, 13 (2004), 255–280 (p. 260).

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were for private circulation through the use of context became effective propaganda.

Visual Modes of Communication: The Press, the Piazza, the Trench The Press Mussolini, in 1910 at the young age of 26, was the editor of La Lotta di Classe (The Class Struggle), a provincial newspaper, as well as being an important figure in the socialist hierarchy of Forlì, and as Bosworth observes, was ‘almost bursting with energy – political, intellectual and sexual’.54 Even though he was the only serious correspondent and actually wrote most of the four-page journal, together with his role as a leading socialist, this could hardly be considered a full-time job for a man like him.55 Mussolini spent most of his day either reading papers or books, and often in the evening, at 11 p.m., he would ostentatiously take his place at the local coffee shop and commence scribbling his articles for the next edition of ‘his’ newspaper. During Mussolini’s early days as a ‘peripheral figure in the world both of Romagnole socialism and of Romagnole politics’, people were beginning to notice him as a man ‘with staring eyes’ which, if you submitted to his truculent and commanding gaze, could place you in his thrall; his thick lips also expressed a certainty and a dominance, or so his admirers said. All in all, they agreed, he was characterised by an ‘extraordinary masculinity’.56 The young still relatively anonymous Mussolini needed to make his way up the ladder by exploring various directions, including the political career, which had started in Forlì.57 It is reasonable to imagine that a combination of factors helped Mussolini to stand out. In the familiar environment, he felt at ease with the cliché of the Romagnole ‘hot tempered, a rough diamond, but a noble spirit capable of sacrifice’, the very same 54 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 76. 55 Ibid., p. 76. 56 G.A. Fanelli, Cento pagine su Mussolini e un ritratto politico della ‘prima ora’ (Rome: 1934), pp. 78–79 and p. 83, in Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 77. 57 Paolo Cortesi, Quando Mussolini non era fascista. Dal socialismo rivoluzionario alla svolta autoritaria: storia della formazione politica di un dittatore (Rome: Newton Compton Editori, 2008), p. 112.

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stereotype that will be used by the regime in the construction of his myth, which combined with Mussolini’s youthful energy and ambition enabled him to try his hand at making an impression. The imperial glorification and the carousel of uniforms that would come later were still far off. Benito then ‘was a young man nicknamed, and not only by his adversaries, e’ matt, the mad man’.58 The painter Piero Angelini who often saw Mussolini during the years of La Lotta di Classe recalled him as ‘slim and wiry he was always dressed in a shabby black suit. Walking about with his head bowed beneath a black hat, set at a rakish angle, typical of the Romagna region’.59 In a rural town, as Forlì was at the time, troubled by poverty and unemployment, Mussolini’s histrionic, original behaviour allowed him to manifest his ideas garishly. Inspired by the thought of Georges Sorel, Mussolini’s intellectual ambitions led the shift from ‘itinerant intellectual into a political agitator’.60 Contempt for parliamentary politics, rejection of moderate socialism, celebration of violence, the need for the people to be enthused with the revolutionary myth leaving to the select few the elaboration of theory and its practical realisation were the objects for his intellectual ambitions, physically embodied in his militant approach. At first ‘vocal’, with a prose that remained ‘brusque, sarcastic and churlish’,61 Mussolini developed a corresponding visual appeal which caught the popular imagination. Journalism became the vehicle for his activism, and from 1911, his photographs started to appear more frequently: for example, marching with his ‘comrades’ in 1912 during a demonstration in Reggio Emilia, or in the local press as editor of La Lotta di Classe, dressed as a ‘teacher’ or a man of letters, a status that had secured him the position of secretary of the local socialist federation, a photograph that was published in the weekly Lotta di Classe while he was in prison in January of the same year62 (Fig. 9.6). His aggressive physical determination, emphasised and

58 Ibid., pp. 128–129. 59 Ibid., p. 129. 60 Ibid., p. 112. 61 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 81. 62 The photograph of Mussolini during a demonstration is reproduced in S.Romano,

Mussolini, p. 29; the photograph of Mussolini as director of La Lotta di Classe is in La Lotta di Classe, Forlì, 13 gennaio 1912, Emeroteca Biblioteca A.Saffi Forlì.

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Fig. 9.6 Mussolini when editor of La Lotta di Classe, 13 January 1912, La Lotta di Classe, Forlì (Raccolte Piancastelli della Biblioteca di Forlì)

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described in the commentary or the written impressions of his contemporaries, was then taking shape and is recorded in this early photographic representation and his ‘pallid complexion, illuminated by two large eyes’ was what people were being encouraged to associate with his name.63 The content of the brief article ‘Benito Mussolini’ in La Lotta di Classe of 13 January 1912, published while he was in prison, reflects the contradiction underlying the relationship between text and image of his early public photographic persona. The photograph, a three-quarter waist-up profile, shows Mussolini wearing a dark suit and tie against a lighter neutral background. The emphasis is on his head, still partly covered with hair, with the focus being his prominent forehead, the locus of his thought process and the hint of a smile hidden under a dark, trimmed moustache. Overall, it is the portrait of a borghese (conformist) in contrast to the exaggerated tones used by the author ‘f.c.’,64 who, as Cortesi notes, like others used a rhetorical style and projected Mussolini’s public image as an exceptional man in every aspect and even his physical presence.65 No surprise is caused therefore by the reference in the article to Mussolini’s physical traits, his eyes are described as ‘restless and deep-set, quick and piercing’, ‘mirror of the soul’, his head like the one of a ‘great grandson of Socrates’ and his brain ‘filled with vertiginous convolutions’, a photographic description reaching its apex when he was compared to Christ, who Mussolini allegedly imitated saying ‘Do not kill’.66 What is noticeable though is the graphic distance separating the projected image from the visual representation. The formalisation of the devotion of the future Duce via his photographs had still to be constructed.

63 Angelini, in Quando Mussolini non era fascista, ed.by Cortesi, p. 129. 64 ‘f.c.’, written in lower case, were the initials of Francesco Ciccotti who worked in

the executive commission of the revolutionary faction of the Socialist Party and who also substituted Mussolini when on trial, writing for the socialist weekly La Lotta di Classe from issue no. 91 (21.10.1911) until no. 112 (16.3.1912), in Cortesi, Quando Mussolini non era fascista, p. 146. 65 Ibid., p. 146. 66 Reproduction of article in La Lotta di Classe, Forlì 13 January 1912, Year III, No.

103, Emeroteca Biblioteca A.Saffi Forlì.

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The ‘ Piazza’ In 1912, Mussolini, as a newly appointed editor of the socialist national newspaper Avanti!, made a rapid improvement to the newspaper and through an aggressive managerial approach as editor managed to increase the circulation from 10,000 to 100,000 copies, reaching as many as 400,000 during the frantic climate at the outbreak of the First World War, and thus competing with the supremacy of Corriere della Sera. This was a decisive turning point for the Italian political system in that it was for the first time influenced by organised popular masses.67 It was a few years later though, in the 1920s, that the changes in the media marked the beginning of a revolutionary way of communicating. When Mussolini came to power, recent technological development presented challenges to the supremacy of the press. The invention of photo-telegraphy, which allowed photographs to be immediately transmitted over great distances, the teletype-setter, an improved form of telegraph, not to mention radio and sound film all required the traditional press to reassess methods of representation and distribution. Looking at two particular photographic events will illustrate Mussolini’s awareness of the growing power of the press especially when allied to the potency, immediacy and modernity of photographs. Mussolini’s celebrity status of the late 1930s was not sudden but the result of a strategy started during the early phase of his political career, when he was still the subject and not commissioner of his own photographic representation. To acquire visibility and political weight in favour of the war, the thirty-two-year-old journalist may have realised that preaching his cause through his newly founded Il Popolo d’Italia was not enough and thus believed it necessary to take to the streets and provoke the authorities.68 During a rally in Rome in 1915, a dramatic shot of his arrest was taken that subsequently became part of his visual biographical representation. Mussolini is photographed during the instant of being physically apprehended, and this image is rare and perhaps the only one where

67 Gozzini, Storia del giornalismo, p. 194. 68 Sergio Romano, Mussolini. Una biografia per immagini (Milan: Longanesi, 2000),

p. 38.

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Fig. 9.7 Published image Mussolini’s arrest 11 April 1915 (the third image in the series) (Fototeca Gilardi)

Mussolini’s body as represented in photography is as un-posed and disorderly69 (Fig. 9.7). While such an image would have been censored by Mussolini’s future regime, committed as it was to always portraying his body in a dignified, self-controlled or authoritarian manner, on this occasion his body ‘scomposto’ fitted perfectly the purpose.70 Mussolini had begun a kind of personal war against anyone who attempted to stop his alternative revolutionary groups Fasci,71 and his vociferous rage had to be translated into strong physical messages since Mussolini ‘wanted to 69 In this context, ‘un-posed’ could be read as ‘discomposed’ to describe the intentional representation of Mussolini’s body deprived of composure in stark contrast to his subsequent highly controlled imagery. 70 The word ‘scomposto’ refers to both the posture of Mussolini and a de-construction of his conventional established photographic representation. 71 In 1915, ‘Fasci’ refers to members of the Fasci of Revolutionary Action led by Mussolini, see P.V. Cannistraro, Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982) p. 198.

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Fig. 9.8 Unpublished image of Mussolini’s arrest 11 April 1915, the following three images are reproduced in the order they were taken (Fototeca Gilardi)

teach the “workers” that only intervention could produce “social revolution”’.72 A modern viewer may think Mussolini clumsy in this photograph but at the time his uncontrolled body could have been interpreted as the passionate gesture of a ‘hero’ ready to sacrifice himself and set an example for others to emulate.73 The decision to publish this image becomes obvious when it is compared to two other shots taken moments apart from the same sequence, where Mussolini looks directly at the camera, walking calmly with a group of men who have even been interpreted as his friends74 (Figs. 9.8–9.9). Yet, historical analysis necessitates considering the images

72 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 110. 73 Riall, Garibaldi, p. 62. 74 One of these two images (Fig. 9.9) to my knowledge has never been either reproduced or linked to Mussolini’s arrest in 1915, and I sourced it from series A415/124, Civico Archivio Fotografico, Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

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Fig. 9.9 Unpublished image of Mussolini’s arrest 11 April 1915 (the second image in the series) (Civico Archivio Fotografico)

together thus revealing the complexity of the context which gives rise to some questions. After looking at the whole sequence, we can ask whether Mussolini modified his behaviour for the photographer. Why, during a busy and contested rally that was transformed into a riot, does no one come between the camera and Mussolini, who is obviously the subject and always at the centre of the image facing the camera in all three shots? Whatever the dynamic, both Mussolini and the photographer knew this was an excellent photo-opportunity and the next day, Monday 12 April 1915, it was front-page news in Il Giornale d’Italia (Fig. 9.10). Through the press, the visibility so necessary to Mussolini could produce even greater impact, and since photographs were assumed to have the maximum level of veracity,75 the apprehension of his rebellious body captured in the image could be perceived as the irrefutable 75 Adolfo Mignemi, ‘Sguardi incrociati. L’Italia in guerra (1943–45)’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini (1900–1945), ed. by

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Fig. 9.10 Front page of Il Giornale d’Italia reporting the arrest of Mussolini with the image by the photographer Porry Pastorel, 12 April 1915 (Biblioteca G.C. Croce San Giovanni in Persiceto)

evidence of his political commitment. When assessing the construction of the image as a press shot, there is no evidence of Mussolini’s involvement in publication, yet he seems complicit with the photographer in the making of the image. Credit, though, must be given to the personalised, lively and sometimes irreverent style of the photographer Adolfo Porry Pastorel (1888–1960), whose subsequent development throughout the Ventennio reflected a growing new cultural attitude that was to produce an ‘intrusive and harsher’ photography free to ‘erode the niceties of social

Giovanni De Luna, Gabriele D’Autilia and Luca Criscenti, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), I, p. 341.

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division’.76 Porry Pastorel was known for actively creating photographic opportunities and may well have done so on this occasion. The clear intentional political purpose, with the press as the principal vehicle for the circulation of his image to a wider public, represents, in my view, a model for the future photographic representation of Mussolini which was designed to be exemplary. His image was to become a living reminder of what was possible and his body the physical translation of highly abstract achievements such as genius, heroism and the nature of intellectual advancement that could not be understood by the illiterate masses.77 Photographically, the arrest of Mussolini represents a turning point with the press appealing to the sensationalist appetite giving the public what they wanted: entertainment, sport, crime and also politics.78 Mussolini’s ‘disobedience’ in the informal and compositionally dynamic photograph by Porry Pastorel was visually revealed through his ‘disorderly’ body, exemplifying his break with the constraints of accustomed codes in the representation of political orthodoxy.79 The Trench The second photographic event refers to Mussolini’s involvement with the First World War, which, as Richard Bosworth noted, meant also furthering his political involvement.80 Active participation in the war caused Mussolini’s wounding and hospitalisation, but also offered him the opportunity to increase his visibility. When his Fasci d’azione rivoluzionaria (League of Revolutionary Action) was fading in significance and his paper was tumbling into financial trouble,81 the images of his wounded body, reproduced in the press in 1917,82 helped raise Mussolini’s profile again. While a stoic reaction to suffering was made palpable through a regained passionate journalistic style, some carefully

76 Roger Hargreaves, Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street, exh. cat., London, National Portrait Gallery, 5th July–10th October 2007, p. 54. 77 Jordanova, Defining Features, p. 45. 78 Roger Hargreaves, Daily Encounters, pp. 54–56. 79 Bosworth, Mussolini, pp. 109–110. 80 Ibid., p. 114. 81 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 119. 82 Il Popolo d’Italia, Monday, 26 February 1917.

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chosen photographs of him taken when wounded and later moved to a hospital in Milan prepared his mythical dimension as an idealised head of the nation. Mussolini caught by the camera, presumably minutes after the accident on 23 February, lying on a stretcher with his head wrapped in bandages, wounded by shrapnel during an exercise, and also in a wellstudied portrait in hospital clothes on crutches during his convalescence are particularly telling images that record Mussolini’s increased understanding and participation in the use of photography for the construction of his myth. From his hospital bed, Mussolini managed to orchestrate the Popolo d’Italia press campaign based on him as the wounded warrior (Fig. 9.11). At the hospital in Milan,83 he was visited by a group of journalists with Margherita Sarfatti, who with emphasis described his injuries as: ‘A whole lot of splinters plunged into his flesh, like the arrows of Saint Sebastian,’ and wrote that she could not forget how Mussolini ‘(…) smiled with a pale face, his eyes sunk deeply into the orbits. His lips hardly moved, and one could see he suffered horribly’.84

These selected photographs, where Mussolini’s physical traits, his pallor, eyes and lips were emphasised, appeared in the press to document his martyrdom and intensified his popularity. Never in the past had a war been recorded as much as the First World War, with photographs extensively reproduced and proposed as ‘commodity’ for the masses, and with 600 military photographers and 150,000 plates, the Italian army photo-press agency was a major producer.85 Contemporary to the transformation of the social structure of society, war contributed to accelerate the process of modern communication. The process of schooling the lower strata of society and the increased circulation of illustrated press favoured photography as a means of conveying a message. What changed during and

83 In the Red Cross Hospital in Via Arena—Milan, Mussolini was looked after by Dr Ambrogio Binda. 84 Margherita Sarfatti, The life of Benito Mussolini (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1925), p. 230. 85 Antonio Gibelli, ‘La nazione in armi’, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others, I, p. 40.

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Fig. 9.11 Front page of Il Popolo d’Italia, the paper founded by Mussolini, with an image of him as a serving soldier, reporting the ongoing story of his wounding, 27 February 1917

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due to the war was the relation between the events and their representation.86 Alongside the extensive production of images edited and circulated through a network of state-approved agencies, less official and personalised images were also produced thanks to the diffused use and decreased cost of more manageable cameras. With reference to Mussolini’s hospitalised image, studied lighting, precise composition with what appears to be a flash or concentrated light source reflecting on the glass behind Mussolini indicate a staged shot with a camera on a tripod (Fig. 9.12). Yet, even though constructed, this image of Mussolini convalescent conveys a sense of intimacy and spontaneity and offers the viewer the illusion of being able to look at a private aspect of Mussolini’s life. This image of him as a wounded soldier records an important passage in the representation of political figures in the press. Images of the war and its protagonists were now reaching the public through a parallel perspective which was on the one hand an expression of the ruling class and institutions, and on the other the visual representation constructed by private and commercial initiatives who took advantage of patriotic enthusiasm and the curiosity of the public, thus popularising the social status of photography.87 Taken and edited for propaganda purposes and the organisation of consent, photographs showed the acceptable version of the war both after being sanitised by government censorship and stripped of the unprintable, such as the representation of corpses. The selection and self-censorship were carried out within a narrative production based on the decision of publishers and editors who had to manage the influx of war images with other photographs, captions and texts.88 Since suffering was excluded in the representation of the war, Mussolini’s image management and dissemination in the press of a presentable version of the war with him as ‘wounded leader’ are significant. It demonstrates his early understanding of the importance of personification in politics and how the impact of his physical presence could provide a figure for an alternative Italian national self-image. At this stage of his political commitment, Mussolini as soldier-hero and journalist was not yet seen as a Fascist icon or the messianic incarnation of national redemption but his figure

86 Ibid, p. 40. 87 Gibelli, ‘La nazione in armi’, in L’Italia del Novecento, ed. by De Luna and others,

I, p. 41. 88 Ibid., p. 41.

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Fig. 9.12 Mussolin’s convalescing in the military hospital of the Red Cross in Via Arena - Milan, talking to Dr. Ambrogio Binda (left). The original image was taken in 1917 and reproduced in various formats and as a postcard in circulation from circa 1920s

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had been regularly enough exposed to the Italian media to have confirmation of his potential for becoming a symbol of modern times and able to epitomise Fascist political aspirations. Even when he did not commission his photographs, during his arrest in 1915, for example, Mussolini seemed able to coordinate the editorial destination of his image. Mussolini’s personal and political background, as a man of the people and socialist, was at the beginning of twentieth-century Italy an ideal story to record and circulate through photography. During a period of extraordinary tension, which led to a tragic world war, and as a result of political, economic, social, cultural and technological change, Italy saw a major shift in the way that people lived, especially in the urban centres. Photography was part of a process where technology and industry were seen as an opportunity for the working class to be employed, better guaranteed and empowered. Photographs, more than other means of communication, were now perceived as democratic, accessible and able to communicate to a society in development where ideas such as mass participation and social levelling deepened in the collective perception. At the same time, the private use of portraits exchanged or treasured within a restricted domestic audience, the public use of photographs increased, to record and commemorate social events but also to manipulate and expand the collective imaginary. As a political journalist, acquainted with the power and ubiquity of the press, Mussolini was placed in a vantage point to shape public opinion and he was quick to recognise the propagandistic potential of the new technology. Helped by the power of a rapidly growing press, as a ‘boy from the back-blocks’ and ‘sprung from a class well below grandiose figures’,89 he sought to expand the sense of connectedness that he was able to generate through his sonorous and passionate speeches. As the developing technology of mass communication made images more available to the general public, the emotionally charged shots of Mussolini arrested or wounded helped bridge the social gap and distance that was more evident between the established representatives of power and the people. Although constructed, the photojournalistic and allegedly ‘spontaneous’ style of the early Mussolini was in contrast to the diffused public image of the liberal and monarchical powers: his personal life reported in the press may have contributed to helping Mussolini connect with the humble workers and the socially excluded. Mussolini’s press

89 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 117.

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photographs could have been read in support of his rhetoric, which aimed at arousing, persuading and bringing the masses into action. Contrary to the general view that sees Mussolini becoming aware of the importance of photography well after his rise to power, photographic evidence in this chapter suggests he exploited his photographic representation in parallel with the growing emergence of new methods of presenting the self in the public sphere and in particular on the political stage. The type and degree of control that he, as a journalist, editor of his own newspaper, and active politician, could have applied to photographs of him remain a matter of conjecture and intuition. The explanation of the photographic document depends on choices made in its production, which image was chosen from a sequence, any retouching of the negative, or the visual context in which the image was proposed. Since interpreting these photographs depends on limited documentation regarding the photographic event and reproduction, it was necessary to read them in the light of the cultural project and historical context that produced them, which was marked by the developing system of mass communication during the crisis in Italy leading up to the First World War. With regard to the images of Mussolini’s arrest in 1915, subject and photographer are known and likewise the fact that they were familiar with the press environment. We can also conclude from photographic history that, at the time, although press photography created full-time work for photographers, their output once bought was considered to be the property of the newspaper and that the need for photographers to sell original shots to the press, spurred them on to invade the privacy of public figures and on occasion make photography increasingly invasive and sensational.90 It is even suggested by photographic historians that ‘public figures and celebrities often orchestrated events for the cameras that followed them’.91 Both Mussolini and the photographer Porry Pastorel fitted into these roles and through the contextual vision of these early photographs of Mussolini, a modern concern for both the image and visual excitement and communication potential, in connection with Mussolini’s representation emerged.

90 Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2010), p. 167. 91 Ibid., p. 167.

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It is reasonable to assume that some images were used as a means of manipulating public opinion. Mass-manufactured images in the form of cartes-de-visite and stereographs had been common in the home of the wealthy in the late nineteenth century, when either received or chosen by viewers, and on occasion arranged in personal albums or collections that could be looked at and exchanged repeatedly. In contrast, newspaper and magazine images were selected by photo-editors or advertising designers, circulated for a short period of time and then superseded by more images.92 We can take it that, although limited, Mussolini had an element of control over his own representation that helped to create a convincing and effective journalistic style which later served to make him into the ‘media monarch’ he became when Duce.93

92 Ibid., p. 236. 93 ‘Media monarch’ is how Christopher Clark describes Kaiser Wilhelm II and his

capacity to reflect and to shape public opinion through the management of his public image, in Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Life in Power (London: Penguin, 2009), p. 218.

CHAPTER 10

Mussolini’s Photogenic Charisma

Between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Italians were subjected to a number of forceful, unusual, ‘charismatic’ political leaders, some of whom have been examined by authors in comparative forms.1 As a result, features such as ‘the quasi-religious style which venerated leadership’ and its magnetic influence over the masses in the interwar years are not considered as marginal factors any longer but rather as binding elements of a Fascist ‘matrix’.2 With reference to charismatic leaders, Roger Eatwell has defined Fascism as ‘an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way, though in practice it tended to stress style, especially action and the charismatic leader, more than a detailed programme, to engage in a Manichean demonisation of its enemies’.3 Emilio Gentile has analysed the rise and fall of Mussolini’s charismatic leadership and the symbolic transfiguration of the dictator’s person into an emblematic hero.4 Emphasising the relevance and importance of Mussolini as the prototype for charismatic

1 Stephen Gundle and Lucy Riall, ‘Introduction’, Modern Italy, 2, 3 (1998), 153–157. 2 Roger Eatwell, ‘The Concept and Theory of Charismatic Leadership’, in Charisma

and Fascism in Interwar Europe, ed. by Antonio Costa Pinto, Roger Eatwell and Stein Ugelvik Larsen (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 8. 3 Ibid., p. xxvi. 4 Emilio Gentile, ‘Mussolini as the Prototypical Charismatic Dictator’, in Charisma and

Fascism, pp. 113–129.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_10

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dictators, Gentile focuses on essential traits of his charisma and relationship with the political sphere, leaving out other angles such as the visual mode of communication. Performativity is emphasised instead by Stephen Gundle who closely links the development of popular politics with the emergence of new forms of charisma, more ‘a matter of showmanship’ rather than heroism.5 Gundle contextualises placing the need for ‘manufactured charisma’, of the early twentieth century in particular, within a specific phase of cultural and political history when the spread of mass culture, the growth of mass movements and rise of modern mass warfare reduced opportunities for individual heroism to create the rise of modern charisma.6 As a political orator, the mystique of Mussolini’s vocal utterances and his physical build proved to be a powerful and seductive combination in the eyes of those who were eager to replace weak leadership with a strong ‘new man’. The Duce’s charisma has been considered as a natural progression of the ‘brutal manliness’ he projected during his early quest for power as an activist.7 Over the years though his projected image was not linear but subject to modification as, like other charismatic leaders, he made compromises and adopted a variety of different attitudes and guises. Yet the dominant image, historians seem to agree, was ‘that of the Duce, the leader whose orders were obeyed’.8 Charismatic leaders typically have great personal presence or ‘magnetism’, which in some cases includes physical traits,9 and Mussolini’s authority was expressed through somatic characteristics and mannerism, such as the evocative power of his piercing eyes, the shape of his head, lips, jaw, chin or his muscular body, which as a whole were key elements of Fascist visual communication. Photography was actively employed in visual framing strategies to promote Mussolini’s desired characteristics, favouring themes and reinforcing his policy positions by routinely applying editing techniques, varying camera angles, selecting particular shots that placed him in a favourable light

5 Stephen Gundle, ‘The Death (and Re-Birth) of the Hero: Charisma and Manufactured Charisma in Modern Italy’, Modern Italy, 2, 3 (1998), 173–189, p. 173. 6 Ibid., 175. 7 Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 207. 8 Roger Eatwell, ‘The Concept and Theory of Charismatic Leadership’, in Charisma

and Fascism, p. 8. 9 Ibid., p. 9.

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and added a further dimension to the impact of his figure when simply met in the flesh.10 The ‘anthropological revolution’ by means of which Fascism aspired to transform Italians was influenced by new communication technology and commercial practices,11 with industries specific to photography modifying their activities for practical benefits to conform to regime objectives. Not only was Mussolini the principal subject for regime photographic propaganda but authors have also credited him as the sole inventor and editor of his own image.12 Focusing on the nature, role and manner in which the then new dictatorial authority exercised power and became legitimised,13 this chapter investigates Mussolini’s ‘charismatisation’ through the medium of photography,14 and highlights how the representation of his body was adjusted according to necessity and historical opportunities, with the occasional influence of show-business communication techniques.15 Following a brief general discussion, a selection of Mussolini’s official poses in regime propaganda are examined to evaluate the contribution of photography to enhancing Mussolini’s appeal. Concentrating on the way in which Mussolini’s body was turned into a set of visual clichés reveals the corporeal aspect of his charisma, an influential factor in the story of his construction as a photographic presence.

10 Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 5. 11 Stephen Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce: l’immaginario del consumismo nell’Italia degli anni Venti e Trenta’, in L’arte della pubblicità. Il manifesto italiano e le avanguardie 1920–1940, ed. by Anna Villari (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), p. 51. 12 See, for example, Piero Melograni, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4, 11 (1976), 221–237; Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 16; Sergio Luzzatto, ‘“Niente tubi di stufa sulla testa.” L’autoritratto del fascismo’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia. Il potere da Giolitti a Mussolini (1900–1945), ed. by Giovanni De Luna, Gabriele D’Autilia and Luca Criscenti, 3 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), I, p. 118. 13 Costa Pinto, ‘Preface’, in Charisma and Fascism. 14 Eatwell, Charisma and Fascism. Introduction. 15 Elio Grazioli, Corpo e figura umana nella fotografia (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), p. 161.

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Charisma Before examining the way in which the new dictatorial authority became legitimised, it is necessary to assess the concept of charisma to then consider it in photographic terms. Although the term ‘charisma’ has been extensively debated, the original association with the Weberian ‘ideal-typical’ classification remains the reference model for most historians. Weber’s definition of charisma as ‘an extraordinary (ausseralltäglich) quality of a person through which he is perceived as the leader’16 is based, as M.Rainer Lepsius explains, on a social relationship between a person possessing such a quality and those who believe in it.17 Therefore, Weber’s perspective is not directed at an analysis of the charismatic leader’s personality but at the structure of charismatic social relationships. Mussolini, the Weberian ‘classic’ charismatic leader type,18 is described by Gentile as the prototype of charismatic dictators who populated the century’s history even though this trait was only fully confirmed once he was in power.19 In order to avoid confusion, Gentile urges a more precise use of the term charisma which is often indiscriminately applied to express concepts such as ‘prestige’ or ‘myth’ and which should not be confused with charisma.20 By applying the category of ‘derived charisma’, Gentile argues that the ‘collective charisma’ attributed to Mussolini worked as an ‘investiture’ by the Fascist movement since his position as Duce within the movement was not associated right from the start with unquestioned charismatic authority.21 Only when the movement was transformed into a party in 1921 did Mussolini achieve recognition as leader of Fascism, and even then mainly due to the party’s internal divisions. His authority was recognised as being the only one capable of uniting the heterogeneous forces while keeping rivalries between the leaders in check.22 16 M.Rainer Lepsius, ‘The Model of Charismatic Leadership and its Applicability to the Rule of Adolf Hitler’, in Charisma and Fascism, p. 37. 17 Ibid., p. 37. 18 Stanley G. Payne, ‘Franco, the Spanish Falange and the Institutionalisation of

Mission’, in Charisma and Fascism, p. 53. 19 Emilio Gentile, ‘Mussolini as the Prototypical Charismatic Dictator’, in Charisma and Fascism, p. 113. 20 Ibid., p. 113. 21 Ibid., p. 115. 22 Ibid., p. 122.

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Despite Mussolini’s charisma being of a contested nature with Fascists not prepared, at least at the beginning, to unconditionally recognise his authority, nor always to accept his nascent cult of personality, Mussolini nevertheless bore some ‘embryonic features’ of a charismatic personality.23 Even though his personal charisma did not prove convincing enough to spontaneously exert an ascendance or be obeyed unconditionally by his followers, many men and women applauded Mussolini without thinking of him as a charismatic leader.24 Even at the beginning through his captivating oratory, but importantly also with the help of photographs, Mussolini tried to seduce, manipulate, eroticise and inform his audience, before his derived charisma became secure. His physical appearance alone might not have been charismatic enough to obtain unquestionable devotion but it proved to be sufficiently attractive to capture attention and sometimes even exude magnetism. From an early phase, whether student, immigrant, soldier or as a journalist, Mussolini was indeed aware of the evocative power of his burning eyes and of how his face and posture were perceived as ‘charismatic’ not only in the flesh but also and perhaps especially in photographs. At the beginning of Mussolini’s political career, his photogenic qualities were most probably perceived intuitively rather than managed. Nevertheless, being able to impress even in images certainly played in his favour and contributed to increasing his personal charisma. Photography in particular played an important part in creating the appeal of Mussolini’s presence, not only because images of him were reproducible on an industrial scale, but also due to the collective Italian imaginary and the ability of the public to identify and emulate an image of their leader through images that had become interiorised. During the interwar years in Italy, people were visually receptive to propaganda through personification. Mussolini’s photogenic qualities were commented on by his contemporaries, and after the making of a documentary in the late 1930s, Edwin Ware Hullinger noted that Mussolini had a good screen presence and his well-defined physiognomy needed no make-up (even in the unlikely event of his agreeing to wear

23 Gentile, ‘Mussolini as the Prototypical Charismatic Dictator’, in Charisma and Fascism, p. 120. 24 Ibid., p. 122.

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it).25 How photogenic was Mussolini in reality and why? Did key images of Mussolini, which have been termed ‘charismatic’, have some features in common? To assess his photogenic charisma, an analysis of the evolution of the iconography of the Duce will focus on the representation of his figure in official photographs and highlight how his body was adjusted according to opportunity and evolving communication techniques.26

Visual Shorthand An understanding of Mussolini’s visual shorthand may be gained through exploring the way in which the dictator’s body was turned into a set of visual clichés or trademarks. Sergio Luzzatto affirms the Duce’s body, ‘was loved to destruction by the majority of Italians’,27 to the extent, Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi adds, that ‘in the totalitarian politics of Fascism, there was only one focus of desire, only one object of pleasure: the regime anthropomorphically embodied in the public persona of the Duce, Mussolini.28 The physical appeal of the leader and the personification of politics were not however a Fascist invention. In contrast to the hereditary principle sustaining monarchical powers of medieval and modern Europe, the power of charismatic leaders in the twentieth century was founded on their uniqueness and while the dynastic character of the monarchy guaranteed continuity beyond the earthly life of individual monarchs, in the ‘interwar age of dictators’29 the physical presence of the leader was not perceived as inferior to the political body, on the contrary, it was considered as being an asset and even the essence of the leader’s authority.30 In contrast to the institutional charisma of the Savoy monarch, Mussolini’s personal charisma constituted the basis of popular consensus. It was the magnetism 25 A comment by Edwin Ware Hullinger who made the documentary ‘Life of Mussolini’ in 1938, in Archivio di Stato (ACS), b.37, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, 18/1, Gabinetto. 26 Elio Grazioli, Corpo e figura umana nella fotografia (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), p. 161. 27 Sergio Luzzatto, Il corpo del duce (Turin: Einaudi, 1998), p. 18. 28 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, pp. 144–145. 29 Roger Eatwell, ‘Introduction: New Styles of Dictatorship and Leadership in Interwar Europe’, in Charisma and Fascism, xxi. 30 Luzzatto, Il corpo del duce, p. 18.

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exuded by the son of a blacksmith that people identified with.31 For many who survived the First World War, Mussolini’s living body justified war and promised redemption for a generation longing for historical legitimisation and the implementation of a new political system. During the regime, the multifaceted graphic projection of Mussolini’s body and its metamorphoses appears as being part of a binary system of communication, where on the one side there was the constructed image coinciding with a didactic programme, with his body serving as a model; on the other there was what Luzzatto defines the ‘mythopoietic inclination of Italians’,32 when his audience projected onto an ideal body they could identify with. During the process of the regime legitimisation, the leader had to personify revolutionary ideals and create popular allegiance through a symbolic language. Thus, the leader’s body was not personalised; rather it conveyed a public symbolic value.33 The focus on his physical presence was twofold. Designed to highlight his exemplary qualities as well as embody abstract values that were sometimes difficult to grasp, such as heroism or manliness, Mussolini’s images simultaneously created bonds and established distance, his image hovering between emulation and worship. Promising access while declaring privilege,34 his projected image was reproduced and pervasively distributed. It offered a model Italians should aspire to, or a figure they could ‘carry around inside themselves’, as long as the model was not literally imitated, since no one was allowed to openly emulate Mussolini’s expressions, or mannerism, or ‘assume a [typical] severe countenance and stick out a vexed pair of lips’ which would have been considered offensive.35 In 1934 the writer Edgardo Sulis set out the conditions Italians could be inspired by rather than emulate the Duce: Imitating Mussolini does not mean copying his walk, his solemn and authoritative manner, his intense staring, his dramatic folding his arms:

31 Ibid., p. 18. 32 Ibid., p. 21. 33 Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 60. 34 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 109. 35 Italo Calvino, The Dictator’s Hats, Stanford Italian Review, 8 (1990), 195–210

(p. 198).

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if you imitate these you would look ridiculous, because only one person can exhibit such greatness, and your bearing is that of a humble Italian.36

People were meant to be ideally galvanised by what he projected through his figure rather than mechanically ape his appearance. To promote his cult as a political celebrity and manipulate public opinion, Mussolini’s photographic strategy used methods of communication borrowed from publicity and show-business, which, similar to standards associated with our contemporary celebrities, induced ‘feelings of intimacy and indeed voyeurism by the public in relation to their leader’.37 Yet, the way in which the ‘sacralisation and commercialisation of political life’ was conducted by Mussolini was ambiguous and experimental, thus making it difficult to classify. The one-man show that Mussolini conducted, with him being the undisputed subject of millions of photographs, aimed at creating a model, though not intended as a ‘brand’ in the modern sense of the term since the cult of his personality was not completely converted into an industry.38 Photography helped make him into an icon yet, as the registers of his propaganda shifted between a down-to-earth and an idealised narrative, not a ‘pure’ celebrity.39 Mussolini’s diverse photographic representation has been considered the result of his own deliberate construction, as the sole director both of himself and of his public.40 The intention here is to avoid adherence to the narrative of linear progress of his ‘look’ and the idea that the evolution of his image unfolded in one continuous, ineluctable line. This is not to downplay the manipulative and ruthless role of Mussolini and Fascist propaganda or to minimise the strict political control that during Fascism was in force for news and information. On the contrary,

36 Edgardo Sulis, Imitazione di Mussolini, 1934, pp. 111–112, in Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, (2003), p. 123. See also, R.J.B. Bosworth, Imitating Mussolini: The Case of Egardo Sulis, European history quarterly, 32, 4, Sage publications, part 4, (2002) 515–534. 37 Riall, Garibaldi, p. 135. 38 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 53–57. 39 Sergio Luzzatto, L’immagine del duce. Mussolini nelle fotografie dell’Istituto Luce

(Rome: Editori Riuniti, Istituto Nazionale Luce, 2001), p. 121. 40 Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolini: una biografia per immagini (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 5; D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento. Le fotografie e la storia, ed. by De Luna and others, p. 99.

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it is to elaborate a more complex understanding of how photography, as a propagandistic tool subject to vigilance, was also influenced by cultural expressions, conceived within a developing image culture, and employed to construct the cult of the Duce. The analysis of visual content as instrumental in shaping public opinion should be considered within a wider logic including symbolic forms of visual persuasion, which, although not produced freely or independently from the Duce’s control, were nevertheless a reflection of the social and visual cultural context that influenced the production practices. The received opinion which until now took for granted the Duce as the exclusive image-maker, the ‘Duce-maestro’ and aesthetic orchestrator of his own photographic representation, needs to be expanded to reflect the logic of a photographic campaign that was not limited exclusively to Mussolini’s personal input.41 The approach should consider the viewed image and the sociocultural environment in the context of a developing commercial culture. There are still questions regarding the critical analysis of the Duce’s photographs, which as an expression of a dictatorial regime, can still exercise a fascination through their emotional content.42 Assessing the efficacy of the photographic campaign of the Duce is still a problem. Literature has only partially confronted this problem either by having taken the impact of Mussolini’s images for granted or by satirising their content. By doing so, it has perhaps minimised the contribution of photography as a vehicle for achieving consensus. It is unwise to assume the cultural homogeneity of the nation at the time, and even if the Fascists aimed ‘to form minds, build loyalty, and create a set of external identifications with the regime’,43 Mussolini’s audience was nonetheless socially, culturally and economically varied and fragmented. The people who saw his photographic images would most probably have interpreted and internalised the meaning of these in different ways. The question of consensus,

41 D’Autilia, ‘Il fascismo senza passione’, in L’Italia del Novecento, p. 99. 42 D’Autilia, ‘Le fonti per la storia del Luce: un mosaico (quasi) completo’, in Fonti

d’archivio, ed. by Pizzo and D’Autilia, p. 17. 43 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, ‘State intervention in Cultural Activity’, in Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 235.

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as dealt with in recent studies of Fascism,44 requires, as Gabriele D’Autilia notes, a new approach to explore and develop further methods and a wider selection of documents.

Face If Mussolini’s corporeality was an effective mechanism in regime propaganda, then his face played a central role. An early photo-portrait by Caminada,45 of whom little is known, was reproduced in this form in 1921 contemporarily with a serious challenge to his personal charisma,46 is a case in point (Fig. 10.1). It is a groundbreaking symbolic representation where his face alone appears from a dark background. This photograph marked the beginning of one direction in the visual shorthand that would make Mussolini immediately recognisable, and later consolidate the dictator’s established photographic representation. Taken from above, the composition emphasises his seemingly shaved head, strong jaw, protruding lips and piercing eyes which are still possibly the most recognisable aspects of his photographic iconography. In particular, Mussolini’s chin and jaw were the focus of many of his portraits, being considered as signs of his masculinity, courage, willpower and daring.47 Caminada’s portrait was favoured by Mussolini, at least at the beginning of his political career. This portrait laden with iconographical clues and somatic expressiveness, bathed in dramatic chiaroscuro, led to Mussolini’s face being celebrated visually as the prophetic appearance of a political leader. Caminada thus translated Mussolini’s photogenic charisma into the ‘icon’ of an emerging movement.48 According to Enrico Sturani, images such as this in a ‘romantic

44 Ibid., pp. 198–232. 45 This image was subsequently used to create a photomontage of Mussolini as

Napoleon, in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 201. 46 Emilio Gentile, ‘Mussolini’s Charisma’, Modern Italy, 2, 3, (1998) 219–235, (p. 222). 47 Eva Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell: Women Photographers in Italy’, in Women Photographers European Experience, ed. by, L. Johannesson and G. Knape (Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2003), p. 114. 48 Lutz Koepnick, ‘Face/Off: Hitler and Weimar Political Photography’, in Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. by Gail Finney (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 218.

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Fig. 10.1 A postcard, originally taken by Caminada in 1919 and on the cover of il Secolo Illustrato 1921

and dangerous to know’ style, where a disembodied-Nietzschean face of Mussolini emerged, were very popular.49 Mussolini himself had an enlargement hanging on the wall of his office in Il Popolo d’Italia and the original image, reproduced extensively on postcards, may well have inspired the poster portrait of Hitler for the electoral campaign in 1932, based on Heinrich Hoffman’s portraits of Hitler taken in 1927.50 Following the typical photo-portrait style of some theatre personalities, singers or silent movie actors,51 the visual language adopted in this early

49 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 201. 50 Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image (Philadelphia, PA:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), p. 73. 51 Two enigmatic images of Tina Pini or Lyda Borrelli taken by the well-known studiophotographer Emilio Sommariva are a significant example, in Divine. Emilio Sommariva fotografo. Opere scelte 1910−1930, ed. by Giovanna Ginex (Busto Arsizio: Nomos, 2004), p. 93 and p. 61.

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Fig. 10.2 A Luce photograph also reproduced as a postcard from 1933 of a vast stencil-style reproduction of Mussolini’s head on the facade of the cathedral in Milan. The original portrait is probably from the late 1920s

photograph of Mussolini eliminated any distractions to concentrate on signs or a particular gesture.52 The seductive charge of this dramatic style had the desired effect and within ten years a variety of interpretations would inspire the gigantic projections used in diurnal and nocturnal sets (Fig. 10.2).53 A postcard portrays a vast graphic stencil-style reproduction of Mussolini’s head from a photo-portrait of the late 1920s. Erected in Milan Piazza Duomo in 1933, it used the principal façade of the cathedral as a backdrop and was also illuminated at night. The monumental portrait was set up during the eleventh anniversary of Fascism and this graphic rendering was also reproduced as a poster and on a variety of other bases. A.G. wrote in the periodical Quadrante a comment that can

52 Ginex, ‘Donne divine nei ritratti di Emilio Sommariva’, in Divine, p. 28. 53 Mussolini’s effigy, erected in front of the Duomo in Milan, was photographed and

reproduced in the press, for example in La Domenica del Corriere 5.11.1933, p. 3.

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be seen as critical of the presentation style of Mussolini at the height of his popularity, which raises a question regarding the extent to which the reproduction of his image was managed directly by Mussolini himself. The vestments of the Piazza del Duomo gave the air of sacristy drapes as if a procession was passing by. The illuminations too rich to be beautiful and too banal to be dignified was a triumph of bad taste. Is it possible that in a fervent and modern Milan, a Milan vibrant and forward looking, that these travesties could take place? Is it not possible to strive forward, abandoning sacristy velvets, the interior decorators drapes, and the armoury from municipal stores? We expect Fascism to be decent, simple, tasteful, daring. Above all when the Duce is present.54

As Karen Pinkus notes, the significant place that Mussolini’s body occupied in the iconography of Fascism reflected the consideration of his own body as a ‘detached object’ to be manipulated and permanently put on display.55 In addition to the ethereal quality of the Caminada portrait, the power of Mussolini’s bodiless image was accentuated by being freed from the encumbrance posed by material reality. This detachment was further reinforced by fragmentation of this image, which Pinkus interestingly qualifies as multiplication,56 when the infinite reproductions were consumed within a context familiar to the viewer thus engendering identification and trust in the subject.57 The face, which is still the principal determinant in the perception of our individual beauty or ugliness with its eighty mimetic muscles and capable of over 7000 expressions, became then a prime symbol of Mussolini’s self.58 Through minute visual details, barely perceptible to the eye, yet rooted in the collective imaginary of the time, whether by means of an emphasised facial trait, lighting to accentuate expressions, an implied movement of the mouth, the framing and cropping of his head

54 Quadrante n.18, 1934 Corsivo 139, p. 46. 55 Karen Pinkus, Bodily Regimes: Italian Advertising under Fascism (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 16. 56 Ibid., p. 16. 57 Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture

(New York: BasicBooks, 1988), p. 90. 58 Anthony Synnott, ‘Truth and Goodness, Mirrors and Masks -- Part I: A Sociology of Beauty and the Face’, The British Journal of Sociology, 4, 40 (1989), 607–636.

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or profile, all formed visual cues able to convey and celebrate Mussolini’s declared values: a romantic vision of heroism combined with idealisation of the concepts of brutality and war. If one places oneself mentally back in the 1930s and considers these portraits in context, Mussolini’sface acquires a further dimension and becomes a potent manipulative tool and even a threat. The conjunctions of seduction, power and pain are central in linking Mussolini’s images to the cultural heritage to which they refer—the public, masculine body as constructed within the visual culture of Fascism in Italy.59 The solidity of Mussolini’s body, his large square jaw, strong neck and shoulders, full lips, large, deep eyes and rotund skull, filtered through skilful lighting and camera-framing, could reassure people and contemporaneously spur them to embrace Fascist ideals: the image of Mussolini’s robust, rather compact features denied ‘the horrors of mangled bodies’ which were still sufficiently fresh in most people’s mind after the First World War,60 adding to which, the projection of his ‘invincible’ body communicated the integrity necessary to defy any threat of possible castration and disempowerment by the dreaded ‘other’.61 Masculinity, as the form assumed by Mussolini’s heroic body, with his features artfully framed, destined for selected publications, and subsequently viewed by differing categories of people, could suggest the promised power that Mussolini had ‘for you and over you’.62 His image suggested a man exuding drive and authority. Contemporary Fascist commentaries report that ‘you look at the Duce almost to find in him that ideal form each one of us attributes to that part of ourselves we feel most strongly. Ready, proud, predestined to fight until victory. This is why one wants to see Mussolini. To mirror oneself in him’.63 The nature of the Duce’s photogenic qualities becomes evident when we see his photo-portraits as a form of communication, a ‘silent language’ made of signs, a ‘theatre of status’ and a visual code that ‘relied on 59 Irit Rogoff and David van Leer, ‘Afterthoughts. A Dossier on Masculinities’, Theory and Society, 5, 22 Special Issue: Masculinities (October, 1993), 739–762 (p. 754). 60 ‘Due to the extensive use of photographic images during the First World War, photography in the immediate postwar era was often closely associated with the war experience’, Lutz Koepnick, ‘Face/Off: Hitler and Weimar Political Photography’, p. 217. 61 Irit Rogoff and David van Leer, p. 755. 62 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC—Penguin, 1977), p. 46. 63 Quoted without reference except for the year 1926 in Oreste Del Buono, Eia, eia,

eia, alalà (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1971), pp. 73–74; Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 119.

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a catalogue of symbols and a constantly evolving iconography’.64 To analyse Mussolini’s somatic features, science and art can help, the first being directly connected with the central role played in the twentieth century by physiognomy, that raised the ‘surface of the body to the visibility of a text’,65 and the second with the painterly tradition that so amply influenced photo-portraiture. Current trends in cognitive sciences, dealing with the attractiveness of facial traits, are taken as a measure to compare the impact of Mussolini’s physiognomy within the social and aesthetic context of his time. Two studies of male facial attractiveness rate symmetry high, especially if associated with healthiness of facial skin and good colour and texture. Facial symmetry and attractiveness derived from facial characteristics thought to be male sex-typical traits, such as prominent cheekbones and balance in face length.66 Science demonstrates that people prefer average faces to relatively distinctive ones. Averageness, in male and female faces, is highly symmetrical, thus increasing the symmetry of face images maximises their attractiveness.67 Mussolini’s face in many photographs could be considered quite ‘average’ but it was through a careful selection of impressive shots that his ‘individual’ face was emphasised, sometimes to the grotesque. Thus, his facial displays and other mannerisms could be characterised by what ethologists refer to as ‘competitive behaviours’, namely, displays of both threat and appeasement aimed at reinforcing hierarchy and status.68 Science also confirms the importance of the gaze, as this is an influential component of attractiveness, insomuch as eye contact is an important part of social interaction. ‘Gaze provides different levels of meanings (e.g., social attention or even “mind reading” through eye gaze) depending on the 64 Julie Gottlieb, The Marketing of Megalomania: Celebrity, Consumption and the Development of Political Technology in the British Union of Fascists, Journal of Contemporary History, 1, 41 (2006), 35–55 (p. 41); Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 150. 65 Suren Lalvani, Photography, Vision, and the Production of Modern Bodies (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 48. 66 B.C. Jones, A.C. Little, D.R. Feinberg, I.S. Penton-Voak, B.P. Tiddeman, D.I. Perrett, ‘The Relationship Between Shape Symmetry and Perceived Skin Condition in Male Facial Attractiveness’, Evolution and Human Behaviour, 25 (2004), 24–30. 67 Jones and Lisa M. De Bruine, Perception & Psychophysics, 8, 69 (2007), 1273–1277. 68 Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual

Framing of Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 148.

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status, disposition, and emotional state of the sender and receiver of the contact’.69 For example, according to recent criteria for classifying facial displays during political and news broadcasts, ‘happiness’ was characterised by eyes wide open and raised eyebrows, while ‘threat’ may include a fixed stare.70

Eyes Let us consider the representation of Mussolini’s eyes, one of the most emblematic features of his representation. Free from the elaborate and decorative style of nineteenth century painterly tradition, Mussolini’s photo-portraits focused on his somatic traits, thus amplifying their effect. Charged with allegorical meaning and traditionally the symbol of ‘allseeing’ divinity or faculty of intuitive vision,71 the omniscient gaze, that is the staring eyes of the frontal pose, also called by Roland Barthes the ‘look’,72 was transformed by photography into a powerful visual cue. Looking intensely into the lens and at us directly, Mussolini’s eyes could suggest spiritual consciousness and transcendent wisdom. A device common to other propaganda regimes, Mussolini’s ‘stare eye to eye’73 became a recurrent iconographical detail to reinforce the leader’s message. Conventionally expressing reciprocity, the eye-to-eye contact of Mussolini met the viewer’s gaze directly to exert continuous pressure and almost demand or accuse. In the discourse of physiognomy and phrenology, signs expressed via the body could refer to moral qualities, either confined to the face or to ‘emphasise a correlation between behavioural traits and cranial shape’.74 The role of the face in communication has received considerable attention since time immemorial and from Aristotle to Della Porta, from Lavater to Lombroso. Psychophysical investigation had been based more 69 Bernhard Fink and Ian Penton-Voak, ‘Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Attractiveness’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5, 11 (2002), 154–158 (p. 157). 70 Grabe and Bucy, Image Bite Politics, p. 150. 71 J.C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames

and Hudson, 1978), p. 62. 72 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1993), p. 113. 73 Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Bibliography of an Image (Philadelphia, PA:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 3. 74 Lalvani, Photography, Vision, p. 48.

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or less on the same methods.75 In his Essays on Physiognomy published in 1789, Lavater claimed that there was a ‘correspondence between the external and internal man, the visible superficies and invisible contents’ and to communicate ‘interior psychic states’.76 Similar claims were made in Darwin’s pioneering analysis of emotional expressions in humans and non-humans.77 Intentionally and actively seeking the viewer from the crowd, questioning them, Mussolini’s look seemed to ask how deep is your adoration, your love?78 The connection established between people and the person represented by the gaze in photography is shown through the destruction or devotion of images when people ‘no longer see, or want to see, them as pictures so much as surrogates or even real people, as if they were alive’.79 Photographic images are still revered, kissed, carried through the streets as if living icons, worshipped, and reviled in spite or fury as if real, in fact people can still become excited by an image as if the subject were present.80 However, as John Berger notes, ‘the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled’81 and even though the systematic visual cues offered by Fascist propaganda can lead us to believe that its centralised aims were equal to standardised messages, the elusiveness of images means that they were sending different messages with the same picture. His glaring gaze communicated in turn authoritativeness and respectability or threat and oppression according to the individual level of perception and reading of the differing format, cropping and publication used.

Direct Gaze Disseminated by the press and lectures of prominent physicians, the pseudo-scientific disciplines of physiognomy and phrenology were quickly 75 Lucia Rodler, Il corpo specchio dell’anima. Teoria e storia della fisiognomica (Milan: Mondadori, 2000), p. 109. 76 Lalvani, Photography, Vision, p. 48. 77 Kari Edwards, ‘The Face of Time: Temporal Cues in Facial Expressions of Emotion’,

Psychological Science, 4, 9 (1998), 270–276 (p. 270). 78 Laura Cumming, A Face to the World: On Self -Portraits (London: Harper Press, 2009), p. 26. 79 Ibid., p. 43. 80 Ibid., p. 43. 81 Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 7.

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‘transformed into popular beliefs’.82 Trickled out in the arts, the empirical indices of characters visually translated the conviction that ‘an individual personality, intellect, and character could be revealed through the depiction of facial configuration and expression’.83 Mussolini’s rigid frontality and his gaze rather than mere reproductions can be interpreted as representational of a system of values that permeated the subject with symbolic meaning. ‘There is something disconcerting about the riveting stare from which we cannot escape’,84 observes Martin Kemp in his volume on iconic images, of which Christ’s face is the founding icon. Since our eye contact with others is generally intermittent, the stare, which is more often artificially reproduced in art rather than experienced in real life, is usually considered an assertive act. In negative terms, it can be perceived as when the starer reproaches someone, and in more positive, when he who stares is about to reveal an important truth.85 Called by Leonardo, ‘the windows of the soul’,86 the movements of the eye in the frontal view are the epitome of introspection and synonym of inner vision, perspective and observing. Kemp continues on the potency of the full face, frontally staring, and points out that this pose has been utilised insistently in political and religious arenas over the ages, the image of Christ being the most famous and popular. The ‘Holy Face’ of Jesus had long been established as an archetype familiar through countless pictures, old and new. A central subject of early icon painting, the standard form of Christ’s frontally portrayed, as Pantokrator, he who rules over everything, is, according to Kemp, associated with the hieratic and the one that serves an important function, as it grants the image recognisability ‘wherever and in whatever medium it appears, whenever in history’.87 Although the analysis of his icon over the centuries in art is potentially useful to understand the perception of Christ as being present in his iconic image, similar to the transubstantiation of

82 Lalvani, Photography, Vision, p. 49. 83 Ibid., p. 48. 84 Marting Kemp, Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 14. 85 Ibid., p. 14. 86 Ibid., p. 16. 87 Ibid., p. 17.

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the Eucharist,88 it is necessary to underline that the stock iconic image of Christ needs to be translated into something recognisable.89 Interestingly, Kemp observes that for many worshippers, even in the West, the presence of the holy figure is most likely to be convincing when the image ‘looks right’.90 Conversely when the image was changed, by Renaissance artists for example, and it was no longer the conventionally recognisable icon, something was lost. Making Christ look like an ordinary man, seemed to confuse worshippers who want to be confident that ‘Jesus differs from us in essential respects of time and space’ as he belongs in an eternal realm.91 Visualisation, namely depictions of the revelation of Christ’s visage, was to serve a specific devotional purpose that conferred his portrait with the power that could move worshippers to extreme reactions.92 Coming face to face with a divine subject evoked, as it still does, intense reactions both to the artist, who manufactured it, and the worshippers. Kemp’s research in current representations through the Internet reveals the formation of a modern icon that tends to combine the old symmetrical physiognomy, approved by a long tradition, with a Hollywood soft-focus effect, typically used for female film stars in the pre-digital era.93 An alternative interpretation of Mussolini’s frequently adopted frontal posture in photographs is that against the ‘cultivated asymmetries of aristocratic pose’, frontality addressed by the camera was associated with the ‘brute facticity’ of the body, that signified ‘bluntness and naturalness of a culturally unsophisticated class, (pose de l’homme de la nature)’ such as criminals, the insane and the poor, ‘that predated photographic portraiture’.94 Possibly, Mussolini’s head-on stare portrait might also be influenced by the visual language used in the production of mug shots, perhaps to contrast the cultivated asymmetries of aristocratic poses. Frontality could then confirm the complete lack of leisure that the body, appropriately attired, aimed to project.95 88 Ibid., p. 17. 89 Ibid., p. 30. 90 Ibid., p. 17. 91 Ibid., p. 18. 92 Ibid., p. 32. 93 Ibid., p. 40. 94 Lalvani, Photography, Vision, p. 66. 95 Ibid., p. 66.

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The characteristic iconography developed during the Belle Époque may have influenced the style adopted in Mussolini’s photographs, with a focus on his gaze and face. During this period (c. 1890–1914), portrait photography expanded its repertoire to include the ‘benevolent effects of celebrity and aura conferred on individuals by the media of publishing, fashion and journalism’ that was later supplemented by the movies.96 Legendary photographers such as Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), Edward Steichen (1879–1973) and Alfred Stieglitz (1864– 1946) were specialists in the depiction of the face. These portraits, almost bodiless, were ‘subdued, reduced in value, idealised, made more poetical, but also less real’, where the idealism, pervading these photographers’ portraits, replaced the background with ‘the subject’s inwardness’.97 When compared to some of the iconic images taken by these cosmopolitan photographers, the influence on Mussolini’s early propaganda portraits becomes more obvious. Steichen’s portrait of the ‘demonic’ composer Richard Strauss, for example, is a significant reference where the subject ‘bathed in a unique allure’, rather than being described ‘in the enactment of stories about [himself], was manifested as a glowing creature’, looking as if he was coiled ready to spring on the viewer (Fig. 10.3).98 Rather than illusionary, Mussolini’s ‘mask’ seemed to be revelatory. The fictional image of Duce/Divo,99 and his exuding allure equated to personages from theatre or show-business, can be linked to the dynamic cultural context, amid the political and media stardom of Mussolini that emerged within the yearning for Fascist didacticism. Using a ‘kit of shrewd, showy devices’ his photo-portraits confirmed rather than extended, the public perception that he aimed to project. Mussolini’s photographs were products of the multifaceted aspects of the regime’s visual propaganda. Fascists were not immune from the need to communicate using show-business techniques to emotionally engage their supporters. Fascism aimed to stimulate the imagination, provoke 96 Max Kozloff, The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900 (New York: Phaidon, 2007), p. 61. 97 Ibid., p. 62. 98 Ibid., p. 62. 99 Giorgio Bertellini, ‘Duce/Divo: Masculinity, Racial Identity, and Politics Among Italian Americans in 1920s New York City’, Journal of Urban History, 5, 31 (2005), 685–726; Dino Biondi, La fabbrica del duce (Florence: Valsecchi, 1967).

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Fig. 10.3 Richard Strauss by Steichen, 1904 (H Horth/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

emotions and create a new consciousness.100 Photography, a modern and democratic medium used by publicity and actors, inasmuch as it transcended type and class, was therefore appropriate to communicate stylised themes and simplified messages, becoming the preferred means to translate into visual terms the emotional involvement and attempted ‘fascistisation’ of the Italian people through the reform of customs and values.101 The nascent culture of the masses, via the stereotype, produced symbolic and bombastic visual codes, at times self-referential and with little real content, that nevertheless contributed to modernisation and socialisation.102

100 Stephen Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce: l’immaginario del consumismo nell’Italia degli anni Venti e Trenta’, in L’arte della pubblicità. Il manifesto italiano e le avanguardie 1920–1940, ed. by Anna Villari (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), pp. 56–57. 101 Ibid., pp. 50–51. 102 Alberto Abruzzese and Davide Borrelli, L’industria culturale. Tracce e immagini di

un privilegio (Rome: Carocci, 2000), p. 177.

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To leave a mark, the early photographs of Mussolini, such as the one taken by Caminada, or another by De Poi (Fig. 10.4), aimed at making Mussolini’s face impressive and recognisable, a face that could not easily be forgotten. To capture the viewer’s attention, his eyes were lit to look smaller and half-closed, or bigger as if they dominated the other features. Mussolini appears in these images as a ‘shrewd political actor who aspires to conquer

Fig. 10.4 A postcard of Mussolini, photograph De Poi, c. 1921 (Archivio Sturani, Rome)

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the Italian public sphere of impersonal and socially distant interaction’.103 This kind of photo-portrait was influenced by the conventions applied to studio photography that symbolically affirmed and celebrated a ‘specific discursive and ideological formations’.104 The cult of the ‘new man’ was already a part of Italian political and cultural identity when Fascism gained importance.105 Centrally important was the idea of reshaping the alleged national characteristics of indolence and inherent individualism, replaced with virile, militaristic and youthful virtues that were required as a model for the new Fascist man. Mussolini’s personal interest in fitness for both individuals and the ‘race’ was an important factor in the development of the model, although he also believed that Italians could be improved through political action by a strong leader, without undue stress on physical attributes.106 And yet, it was precisely his somatic features that played such a crucial part in the personification of his didactic approach. In 1935 a Fascist comment stated that ‘it is not possible to be a Fascist hierarch, if you do not embody that integral Italian which has as its prototype the virile figure of the Duce’.107 Therefore in the process of personification of politics, another important aspect of Mussolini’s character was the man of vision. Seen not only as a ‘sound character who fought with the spoken and written word, but also as an heroic soul and revolutionary man of action’, accounts of Mussolini’s emerging personal charisma had in common the image of him as a ‘new man’ and a ‘man of faith’.108

103 Koepnick, ‘Face/Off: Hitler and Weimar Political Photography’, p. 218. 104 Lalvani, Photography, Vision, p. 59. 105 ‘The first biography of Mussolini, Antonio Beltramelli, L’uomo nuovo, 1926 was also the first of this genre which proved to be both popular and profitable in many different versions during the course of the Ventennio’, in Forgacs and Gundle, Mass culture, p. 302. 106 Emilio Gentile, ‘The Fascist Anthropological Revolution,’ in Culture, Censorship and

the State in Twentieth Century Italy, ed. by Guido Bonsaver and Robert S.C. Gordon (London: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney, 2005), p. 23. 107 Unknown author in the Annuario della Federazione Italiana Sport Invernali (1935), in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 123. 108 Gentile, ‘Mussolini as the Prototypical’, in Charisma and Fascism, ed. by Costa Pinto and others, p. 118.

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Close-up One of the visual strategies used to present the Duce, not only as a possessor of virility and prowess but also of a vision, was the close-up. The tight framing of Mussolini’s face from slightly above, with fixed eyes casting a deep, partly worrying, partly threatening glance into the eye of the beholder, was a regular feature in the printed press from the 1920s.109 Displaying details without including the broader scene, Mussolini’s close-ups were used to distinguish him and indicate his importance. Visibly formulaic, this type of portrait managed to stylise Mussolini into a trademark where his singular charismatic traits communicated a powerful wholeness. An emblematic example is a full-face sepia portrait of Mussolini from Milan Civic Photographic Archive (Fig. 10.5) was widely used in press photographs. Softly lit predominantly from the side with the viewer’s attention focused on his large square jaw, full lips, prominent-straight nose and fixing gaze, this photograph is a testament to the beginning of Mussolini being transformed into a myth through ‘the symbolic transfiguration of his person into an emblematic hero’.110 This type of portrait was typical in that it had all the overtones associated with oil painting confirming status and declaring significance, since it gives a composite, even definitive image of Mussolini’s personality. Yet, being a photograph, and thus part of the technology with a democratic and populist base, it suggests an instantaneous capturing: it was used as the stamp of authority for individual identification.111 Special lighting created a ‘photo-charismatic’ effect principally through a particular focus on his eyes which mixed seduction with aggression, this dramatic style was probably not a result of an isolated process but more likely corresponded to a series of interactions—aesthetic, cultural, ideological, sociological and psychological, simultaneously representing ‘the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity’.112

109 Schmölders, Hitler’s Face, p. 79. 110 Gentile, ‘Mussolini as the Prototypical’, in Charisma and Fascism, ed. by Costa

Pinto and others, p. 114. 111 Clarke, The Photograph, p. 103. 112 Ibid., p. 102.

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Fig. 10.5 Left, a postcard and the same image published in the weekly newspaper Il Popolo di Romagna on the right on 14 April 1923

Individual meaning could be established through a series of codes and symbols, of literary and painterly influences by which Mussolini’s personality was framed and promoted before an audience who saw photography primarily as a means of reproducing a familiar face.113 This was also the typical treatment of male personality where the ‘body has been reduced to the head only, without any sense of background or external reference: the head becomes an iconic presence implying intelligence, individualism and above all genius’.114 Contrary to the depiction of women, who, as an index of beauty and passivity faced the camera sideways and were usually looked at rather than looking, Mussolini is a man who faces the camera (and us) and looks the world squarely in the face. Thus the photograph would later be interpreted by those who reproduced it over and over

113 Ibid., p. 103. 114 Ibid., p. 105.

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again.115 Images of this kind conferred and insisted on a whole register of such attributes: power, strength, imagination, creativity and action.116 To avoid uncertainty and confusion, his close-up portrait was not overused and his full face was carefully selected, in a basic alternation of agitation and integration, where photographic propaganda campaigns depicted Mussolini as subversive, revolutionary and galvanic in turn with a less defiant, pacified but perhaps more pervasive representation.117 Mussolini’s bodiless face was usually employed to emphasise particular messages or occasions, functioning as a ‘loudspeaker’ to draw attention. A drawing from a photograph, reproduced in 1926 in L’Illustrazione Italiana on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the March on Rome, deals with Mussolini’s bodiless head in a similar fashion, accentuating the contrast between light and shadow, again staring directly at the viewer. Using a similar process to advertising, Mussolini’s expressions, jutting jaw, protruding lips and eyes rolling, fixed by the lens and obsessively reproduced for the public, became repetitive visual slogans to make him recognised not only by a restricted elite but an ever wider public.118 The cult of the Duce built on simple ideas and catchy slogans transcended the primitive spirit of political propaganda anticipating visual advertising codes. Inasmuch supported by political tyranny, the totalitarian propaganda was presented to the public as the result of free choice both to the masses and the elite.119 More than a decade after Caminada’s decontextualised representation of Mussolini, a Ghitta Carell photograph was cropped to create a similar effect and reproduced in 1938 in L’Illustrazione Italiana such that Mussolini’s face was almost too large for the full page (Figs. 10.6 and 10.7).120 The opposite page of text entitled ‘Mussolini europeo’ (European Mussolini) offset the image stressing that the dictator was 115 Hans-Michael Koetzle, Photo Icons: The Story Behind the Pictures, vol. 2, (London: Taschen, 2008), p. 115. 116 Clarke, The Photograph, p. 105. 117 Kozloff, The Theatre of the Face, p. 102. 118 Quoted in G.Bottai, Diario 1935–1944, ed. by G.B. Guerri, Milano, 1982, p. 215,

in Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 54–55. 119 Pasquale Chessa, Dux. Benito Mussolin: una biografia per immagini, (Milan: Mondadori, 2008), p. 144. 120 Rino Alessi, ‘Mussolini Europeo’, is the two page article illustrated with the close-up of Mussolini’s face in Illustrazione Italiana, 9.10.1938.

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Fig. 10.6 Ghitta Carell’s studio portrait of Mussolini in L’Illustrazione Italiana, 1937

fighting for a new international justice. His familiar, intense, menacing gaze suggested ‘ownership’ not so much of an image, but of a physical and moral territory unique to the moment in history. Edited and published during a foreign policy crisis, this image may not have intended to reclaim a face as ‘his’ but rather served as part of an authentic physical reality to be perceived as ‘the active mapping of a confident and assertive act’ occupying a larger context.121 His closely shaved head, backlit to create an aura that emphasised the intensity of his staring eyes, is a significant example of Mussolini’s visual shorthand where the power of his body was not directly referred to, but implicit through the intensity of the gaze, as was also his presence. Here, as with other portraits by Carell of Mussolini, analysed in more detail in Chapter 7, the deliberate ambivalent construction of values illustrated the multifaceted identity the Duce had to continually develop to engage with Italians. The photographic types of 121 Clarke, The Photograph, p. 127.

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Fig. 10.7 Mussolini by Ghitta Carell in L’Illustrazione Italiana 9 October 1938

‘the Warrior’, ‘the Condottiero’ or ‘the Founder of the Empire’ were all living reminders of the growing formal omnipotence of the Duce. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to determine the effect either of individual photographs or photographic images. Consequently, rather than deduce a particular kind of relationship between individual citizens and the image of Mussolini, it may be more productive to begin to interrogate the photographs and consider them as forms of communication or ‘figures of speech’.122 Even though images are mute, through a decoding of the language by which they were composed, the particular forms of representation produced and adopted by the regime can be reconstructed. William Mitchell reflects on the magical character of images and ponders on our ‘double consciousness’ towards images which can make us behave as if they were alive or have a power to influence

122 Ibid., p. 10.

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us and thus act by ‘demanding things from us, persuading, seducing’.123 Mitchell believes that even when we are aware that images are themselves powerless, we still remain ‘stuck with our magical, pre-modern attitudes toward objects, especially pictures’. Rather than overcome or treat these attitudes with suspicion, his aim is to understand them.124 Everyone knows, he continues, that a photograph of their mother is not alive, but they will still be reluctant to deface or destroy it.125 Perhaps because we know that we risk destroying the internalised image if conceptually we are able to destroy the hard copy. The idea that humanity has evolved through nourishment from totemic images and that these can still be considered as animated beings, as alive in the modern world as in traditional societies, can help to understand these forms of image-power such as propaganda photographs. Expressions of idolatry or iconoclasm, when the idol can be either worshipped or despised, reviled for being a nonentity and feared as an alien and a supernatural power, is the most dramatic, ambivalent and ambiguous kind of force. Mussolini’s most iconic photographs, here considered in their stylistic diversity as documents, were produced for a purpose according to a system of conventions and often loaded with symbolic meaning.

123 William Mitchell, ‘What Do Pictures “Really” Want?’, October, 77 (1996), 71–82 (p. 7). 124 Ibid., (p. 72). 125 Ibid., p. 73.

CHAPTER 11

The Emotional Appeal

The Duce’s fame as an exceptional personality did not just suddenly materialise.1 His ascendant gradually grew from the interplay of historical circumstance and personal ambition. The development of his image management and visual communication, although not linear, shared a constant: the emotional appeal. Initially based on personal intuition and later becoming increasingly systematic, Mussolini’s exploitation of the photographic medium evolved into an elaborate process of mass communication with his images being used as both agents and objects of the cult of the Duce. The seductive energy exuding from some of his more emotionally charged images enabled Mussolini’s projected persona to communicate a politics that was often visually intriguing and accessible to the masses. Reinforced by an aura of evidential veracity, as if mirrors of reality, photographs of the Duce produced for mass consumption were distributed as the preferred universal medium for spreading Fascist values and shaping perceptions of events. This chapter looks at how photography was actively engaged in visual framing strategies that promoted Mussolini’s visual shorthand, favouring themes and reinforcing his policy positions by routinely applying editing techniques, varying camera angles, selecting particular shots that placed him in a favourable visual light and

1 Christopher Duggan, ‘The propagation of the cult of the Duce, 1925–26’, in The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 27.

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added a further dimension to the impact of his figure when simply met in the flesh.2

Images as Objects of Cult To influence, manipulate and spur Italians into action, Fascism appropriated and adapted religious forms for worldly purposes and employed a pervasive use of emotionally-laden imagery to attribute political appeal to the dictator’s body. As a means of indoctrination, images played a crucial part in the ‘sacralisation’ and ‘commercialisation’ of Mussolini’s political life, where the Duce in collaboration with his supporters as well as participation of the religious orders, the photographic and publishing industries together contributed to the creation of the ‘experience of the sacred’.3 Even though not invented by Fascism or Mussolini, the visual strategy of using images as objects of cult is a significant aspect of the evolution of Mussolini’s iconography that needs to be linked to his consideration of the masses and the style with which he approached them. Richard Bosworth believes Mussolini’s role as a leader ‘foreshadowed that world in which political chiefs have turned into travelling salespeople, more fascinated by image and spin than devoted to a deeper comprehension of society’.4 The Duce’s eternal pessimism about human nature and suspicion towards Italians,5 considered by him as being ‘endlessly contradictory’,6 together with the general view he shared of the masses being emotional and irrational, had profound political implications on the visual choices of Fascist propaganda. At the time when Mussolini was in power, the role of emotions within theories of political behaviour on the idea of the nation was at the centre of a debate spread throughout Europe by the French Revolution. According to Emilio Gentile, the educating state had, above all tasks, the pivotal mission to restore unity and form virtuous citizens ‘as a child

2 Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 5. 3 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 46. 4 Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 173. 5 Ibid., p. 192. 6 Ibid., p. 262.

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opens his eyes - Rousseau wrote – he should see the fatherland’.7 Fascist Revolution, Gentile continues, did not mean the subversion of bourgeois society, since its main aim was the creation of a civic religion to reconstruct ‘the cult of the nation and a regeneration of the Italian people’. The secular religion that the regime imposed was centred ‘on the sacred nature of the nation’ with its existing rituals and symbols that Fascism assimilated and integrated for its own, one being the personification of abstract concepts through the cult of the Duce.8 When referring to the balance between coercion and consent, Paul Ginsborg mentions the existence of a gap between rhetoric and reality,9 which in the language of Mussolini was ‘alternating exaggeration and ornamentation to bald-faced untruths and the total traducing of reality’.10 In this highly inventive and effective propaganda strategy, Mussolini’s predilection for visual emotional appeals might have been formulated on the intuitive basis that Fascism’s political objectives were more likely to be supported if linked to familiar affect-laden symbols like those used for monarchs or saints. There were also cultural reasons independent of the Duce’s ingenuity. As a monarchy and seat of the Catholic Church, Italy had already assimilated and integrated both the beliefs of the ‘divine right’ of kings, the supernatural, and the mythology of heroes and the cult of the leader as a major force from the Roman past. Furthermore, due to the influence created by an increased interest in psychoanalytical interpretations of the arts,11 visual emotional appeals were viewed as ‘biasing the intellectual processing of a message’ and therefore conditioning, at a subconscious level, both ‘feelings and thoughts people had about an appeal and its cause’.12 Similarly, this negative view of emotion as an irrational and superficial response fitted with Mussolini’s conception of the masses and their

7 Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1996), p. 2. 8 Gentile, The Sacralization, p. 21. 9 Paul Ginsborg, Family Politics. Domestic life, devastation and survival 1900–1950

(London: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 222. 10 Ibid., p. 222. 11 D’Autilia, L’indizio e la prova. La storia nella fotografia (Milan: Mondadori, 2005),

pp. 104–105. 12 Leonie Huddy and Anna H. Gunnthorsdottir, ‘The Persuasive Effects of Emotive Visual Imagery: Superficial Manipulation of the Product of Passionate Reason?’, Political Psychology, 4, 21 (2000), 745–778 (p. 746).

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manipulation. His high regard for the works of the French theoretician Gustave Le Bon, an admirer of Mussolini, is well known. Le Bon even used to send him his works emphasising the importance of a leader appealing to the emotions and using images. He also believed that language could be adapted to the politics of the image using imprecise terms and words with a mystical quality.13 The role of emotions within political decision-making worked in parallel with the potential of modern technologies such as radio, cinema and the increased use of photographs in the press, to arouse public fears, play on citizens’ emotions and extend the reach of demagogic oratory.14 The persuasive effect of emotional symbols can be considered as transferring ‘somewhat mechanically from an object that elicits strong emotional feelings’,15 a flag or a religious icon, to a subject who initially might have aroused little or no emotional responses, such as the Duce. Pairing an affect-laden object to a neutral subject, in our specific case Mussolini’s image, as a strategy was already widely used within advertising and had been shown to effectively heighten emotional reactions to an advertised product or as conditioning for the formation of social and political beliefs.16 This manipulative and cynical way of using images was employed as a propaganda technique and deemed to be particularly effective for some segments of the population, ‘specifically those least likely or able to process its intellectual content’.17 This view, still prevalent in critical debate, considers Mussolini’s photographs as a particularly useful means of indoctrination for the illiterate and in more general terms as an influential method of propaganda for a mass media image of the Duce, rather than his more ‘erudite’ image diffused through paintings and sculptures.18 A neat division between fine art and propaganda art appears methodologically counterproductive and it seems reductive to consider photography as appealing merely to a popular audience. Photography played a

13 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 52–53. 14 Huddy and Gunnthorsdottir, ‘The Persuasive Effects’, 4, 21 (2000), p. 746. 15 Ibid., p. 747. 16 Ibid., p. 747. 17 Ibid., p. 748. 18 Laura Malvano, Fascismo e politica dell’immagine (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1988), p. 32.

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significant role for the middle classes in transmitting and reinforcing for educational purposes what was considered ‘high’ art, such as oil painting and sculpture. Photographs of the Duce were meant to be appealing and understood on various levels by differing audiences, including the more educated. A broader consideration of the medium can be understood when considering the multiple forms of representation and circulation, and during the regime, this was achieved by circulating photographs of Mussolini in various formats, mountings and publications.19 It was precisely within this composite visual code that the phantasmatic, almost hallucinatory quality of the Duce’s early romantic portraits was replaced with photographs representing the configuration of his body composed of separate compositional elements. The most striking aspect of this passage is revealed through subtle details of corporeal signs, such as Mussolini’s typical, repeated gestures, the protruding jaw, furrowed brow and hands on hips, as if in search of a meaningful pantomimic composition.20 There was a startling new awareness of corporeal expression where the Duce’s face and body functioned together, as a powerful instrument of communication. This was likely to have been influenced by the theatrical acting technique and silent movies of the time.21 Fixed before the camera, and subsequently reproduced in differing formats and publications, together images formed a collective album where Mussolini’s many roles were considered as part of a national educational mission.22

The Heroic Body Regime propaganda especially emphasised the Duce’s predilection for horse-riding, and photographs of the uniformed Duce on horseback were disseminated to evoke the equestrian monuments of the Roman Caesars and of Renaissance condottieri.23 One of the abstract concepts often used during the regime, that made power visible through personification, was 19 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 48 and Sturani, pp. 35–42. 20 Dorothy Johnson, Corporality and Communication: The Gestural Revolution of

Diderot, David, and The Oath of the Horatii, The Art Bulletin, 1, 71 (1989), 92–113 (p. 107). 21 Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), p. 112. 22 Ibid., p. 114. 23 Luciano Cheles, ‘L’animal dans la propagande figurative italienne du fascisme à nos

jours’, in L’Animal en politique, ed. by Paul Bacot et al. (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2003), 246–251.

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the traditional metaphor of horse and rider. The mounted figure of the Condottiero (the fighting leader) was photographically translated into the Duce where his uniform became the modern equivalent of armour.24 Subjecting official photographs to a contextual analysis of a particular event with Mussolini as Condottiero can reveal how photographs were changed and manipulated according to different media used. A memorable iconic image of Mussolini on horseback taken in Libya was of him receiving the sword of Islam in 1937 (Fig. 11.1).25 This

Fig. 11.1 An image taken by Luigi Leoni and sent to the Corriere della Sera, see right, for publication on the following day, 20 March 1937 (Fondazione Corriere della Sera Archivio Storico)

24 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 61 and p. 73. 25 Photographs of Mussolini on horseback were taken on 20 March 1937 in Bugara

(Tripoli) during the solemn ceremony for the presentation of the sword of Islam. Mussolini received the Sword of Islam from Iusuf Kerisc, a leading Berber supporter of the Italian occupation against the Libyan resistance.

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Fig. 11.2 Left the Luce print, here as a postcard, cropped and on the right, the edited version published in Giorgio Pini’s biography of 1939

image was sent via telephoto to Corriere della Sera for immediate publication26 and then became part of a series subsequently manipulated for differing propaganda destinations. The first published image shows a groom holding Mussolini’s horse, while in yet another, from the same event published later in Giorgio Pini biography of 1939, the groom has disappeared replaced by palm trees (Fig. 11.2). The metamorphosis of this photograph as a Fascist propaganda statement was complete: the martial pose exaggerated by the low angle view, the figure of the dictator prominent against the retouched background, with a sword forming the apex of a triangular composition. Through manipulating and editing the original image, a new pattern of meaning was constructed that combined a contemporary interpretation of the events with an ideological message. The conventions for the representation of the ruler, as heroic and superhuman, led to the creation of the triumphant Mussolini on a horse in Libya. This construction should be read as theatre and part of a choreographic space, with a public representation of an idealised self,27 and in the same way that a viewer would accept an actor playing differing roles, no contradiction was apparently

26 Telephoto allowed the press to receive photographs quickly and over great distances. An article in La Domenica del Corriere, 28 July 1935, p. 8 claimed transmission of a photograph 18 × 26 took 12 minutes. 27 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 68.

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seen with the representation, for example of the ruler as a bureaucrat or a knight on horseback. What we today may consider as naïve was probably acceptable because it was the body of Mussolini representing a concept that filled the uniform and not the individual. These images were taken by the photojournalist Luigi Leoni (1899– 1991),28 typically at the time though the only credit was to the Istituto Luce perhaps to accentuate Mussolini as the subject, and stress that the potency of his image was the consequence of mystical qualities. Photographers, considered as interchangeable technicians rather than original visual communicators, were rigidly controlled and images, once developed, printed and mounted in albums, were delivered to Mussolini or functionaries of his centralised propaganda structure to be reviewed for publication. A factor that also helped create a permissible image of Mussolini was the photographers’ internalisation of the accepted iconographic canons, a form of self-censorship which combined with the ongoing process of approval from differing bodies, authorised ultimately but not always personally by Mussolini, worked towards acceptable image types of the Duce. Photographers knew that as long as Mussolini was portrayed in a martial pose, their photographs would be accepted.29 Another rendering of this image was published in 1937, where through clever cropping, the importance of the Duce was accentuated by eliminating unnecessary detail (Fig. 11.3), even to the extent that the horse was truncated as can be seen in L’Illustrazione Italiana in 1937. A further example of Mussolini’s clothed body in uniform can be seen with him playing the part of a contadino (farm labourer) sowing a field (Fig. 11.4).30 The three photographers in this image had to react quickly, as Mussolini, probably aware of the importance of being photographed, 28 Luigi Leoni began to work as a photojournalist in the agency ‘Vedo’ of Adolfo Porry Pastorel, quickly becoming a freelance photographer throughout the Fascist period. He also worked as editor in chief of ‘Lavoro Fascista’, see Archivio Storico Luigi Leoni. 29 Vincenzo Carrese (1910–1981), photographer and founder of the independent photographic agency Publifoto in Milan, stated that life in those days was not that difficult for photojournalists, and as long as the duce was portrayed in a martial pose, photographs were accepted by the press see, Cfr.F.D.P., ‘Quarant’anni della Publifoto’, in Popular Photography Italiana, n. 127, March 1968, p. 20, in Fotografia e fotografi, ed. by Anna Lisa Carlotti, p. 82. 30 Adolfo Porry Pastorel, Macchia di Terracina, Sabaudia, Milizia Nazionale Forestale, September 1934, in Mussolini. Una biografia per immagini by Sergio Romano (Milan: Longanesi, 2000), pp. 72–73.

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Fig. 11.3 ‘War!’ Mussolini posing on horseback with a sword on the cover of Tempo, 13 June 1940

had, especially during official occasions, a tight schedule with only a prescribed amount of time. Mussolini often refused to hold poses for the camera,31 and here, the photographer Porry Pastorel, a few moments 31 Note from Ministero per la Stampa e Propaganda, 23 April 1936, ‘Cerimonia di Aprilia’ in ACS, McP, Gab., SpD, CO 1922-43, b.579, F.201023-201082.

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Fig. 11.4 This image shows Mussolini sowing on a visit to the Milizia Nazionale Forestale on 19 October 1934. Note the presence of various photographers at these kind of events

later and possibly from the same position as the previous image,32 took an image that was suitable for publication as a press photograph. The context was coherent with no photographers or other details to distract from the centrality of Mussolini (Fig. 11.5). On the contrary, another photograph also from the same event but a different angle was manipulated and reproduced as a photomontage. Published in the monthly La Vittoria in 1935 (Fig. 11.6), this composition is particularly worth noting for the juxtaposition of the contrasting realities represented by the military planes and mechanised agriculture with the fields being hand sown by

32 Adolfo Porry Pastorel, Macchia di Terracina, Sabaudia, Milizia Nazionale Forestale, 19 December 1934, in Fotografia della libertà e delle dittature, da Sander a CartierBresson 1922–1946, Giuliana Scimé (Milan: Mazzotta, 1995), p. 208.

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Fig. 11.5 This image, by Porry Pastorel, was suitable for publication

the Duce contadino.33 It is a composite image encapsulating the differing ideals that Fascism wished to transmit, and its reproduction was a key element of the pedagogical function of Luce. Like the American promoter Barnum or the legendary film producer Cecil B. De Mille,34 Mussolini seems to have appreciated the need to adapt his image and create the illusion of dynamism. In agreement with his earnest supporter Giuseppe Bottai, who feared the ossification of the Fascist Party, the Duce used what in advertising is now called ‘subliminal technique of persuasion by association’.35 In order to appeal to the minds

33 Adolfo Porry Pastorel, Macchia di Terracina, Sabaudia, Milizia Nazionale Forestale, 19 December 1934, in Romano, p. 73. 34 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, p. 55. 35 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 95.

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Fig. 11.6 This is a photomontage using another image from the event, published in La Vittoria in January 1935

of the modern consumer, Mussolini was photographed on motorcycles, the twentieth-century version of the ruler on horseback. Associated with power and risk, the image of Mussolini riding a motorbike, like with all other mechanical means of transport such as aeroplanes and cars, could convert the viewers to the values of technological progress and daring supported by Fascism and ultimately seduce them to buy the product. He personally owned a Guzzi Falcone Sport 500,36 and images of him riding 36 In 1935, Mussolini bought a new 6 cylinder, 2300cc. red Alfa Romeo which he entered for the Mille Miglia; due to a petrol embargo, all cars in the competition were required to run on an alternative fuel, yet Mussolini’s vehicle driven by his personal

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Fig. 11.7 ‘Il Duce fra i Centauri’ is a postcard from 1933

a motorbike, in conjunction with the abolition of road tax for motorcycles in 1933, increased their popularity.37 This photograph is part of a series of twenty shots relative to official ceremonies between 1931 and 1934 (Fig. 11.7), where the Duce was photographed in full length surrounded by other motorcyclists and then gradually edited until we see him alone in close-up against a neutral background (Fig. 11.8).38 When looking at this image, the term ‘subliminal’ should be employed in a broader sense, as to the way the mental image of a given ‘product’, in this case Mussolini, ‘is built up by associating various objects with its visual image’.39 It was a process of conscious manipulation on the part of the propaganda agency Istituto Luce, their photographers and the printing industry but ‘largely unconscious to the

driver Ercole Boratto managed to finish in thirteenth place partly due to his machine still running on petrol, in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 139. 37 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 58–59 and 64–65. 38 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 140. 39 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 95.

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Fig. 11.8 Another postcard from 1934, shows an image without detail (‘assolutizzata’ ) to distract from Mussolini

viewers’.40 To the modern eye, this image may mean little, whereas it is likely that at the time the juxtaposition of values projected onto the inanimate object, the motorbike, was difficult to separate. Both vehicle and rider were associated with power, aggression and virility. Mussolini’s

40 Ibid., p. 95.

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fame was thus transferred to the product, giving viewers the possibility of following his example and thus buying into his ‘brand’.

The Body Unclothed The representation in photography of Mussolini’s body focused on personifications of the ruler employing traditional, iconographical conventions that had already been absorbed in the collective imaginary. The most radical development though was the photographic representation of Mussolini as a political leader exhibiting his unclothed body. The use of the undressed figure for any public person other than film stars or athletes was without precedent. Garibaldi, for example, always kept his clothes on, especially before a painter or a photographer, and although unconventional, his flowing and brightly coloured outfits were in fact an important element of his physical attractiveness. Garibaldi’s appeal could be interpreted as ‘romantic’ with ‘his scarlet tunic fitted loosely to the body’ worn almost like a flag, which together with his long, blonde and wavy hair projected an image that can be understood as ‘a kind of Italian fusion (or bricolage) of Walter Scott hero and Mazzinian genius, of eclectic borrowings, from romantic sensibilities and militant Jacobinism’.41 While Garibaldi’s projected image was pure and heroic, the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s appeal was dark and provocative. His decadent style evoked more Algernon Swinburne or Oscar Wilde rather than Walter Scott’s heroes; his body was made appealing through a refined aestheticism. Indeed, he had ‘substantial defects for a potential leader’,42 and he was not conventionally attractive: bald, a little taller than 5ft and with a nasal voice, D’Annunzio used the allure skilfully created around his persona to convey an attractive and glamorous figure. Everyday experience would be transformed deliberately into something unique and mythical. Even the loss of hair at a very young age, for instance, was transformed into a ‘gift’ that made ‘his egg shape head a beauty of Creation and a sign of superior evolution, as hair is no longer

41 Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 56. 42 Michael A. Ledeen, D’Annunzio: the First Duce (New Brunswick USA: Transaction, 2002), p. 11.

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necessary in a modern civilised society’.43 The loss of an eye during the war far from being a handicap became ‘inspiration for one of his best examples of literary prose’, and likewise due to his ‘unattractive teeth’, described as such by his personal assistant, the poet never smiled in front of a camera.44 Nudity was not completely avoided by the Vate and he, like Mussolini, was photographed showing parts of his body and even completely naked (albeit when he was 25 years old, while lying on the beach by the Adriatic). In the early decades of the twentieth century, no American politician, let alone a British one, was photographed dressed in a way that was anything less than impeccable, nor was partial nudity employed by other dictators contemporary to the Duce. At the end of the nineteenth century, the celebration of physical work had been translated into visual forms through propaganda material where the ideal and nobility of the working man, as an icon of socialism, were represented in drawings of men with their shirts off, often holding a tool.45 The ‘exhibition of flesh’ was adopted by Mussolini, as part of the image of a working-class boy made good.46 It was precisely because of his social extraction that Mussolini could afford to strip off in front of the camera and still project a convincing image without losing face as prime minister. Silvio Bertoldi’s chronicle of Mussolini’s life during the regime uses the black shirt as a narrative tool to link the symbolic garment to the essence and contradictions of Fascist Italy.47 According to Bertoldi, Mussolini was the one who wore the black shirt the least, opting instead for the most bizarre sartorial combinations. The ‘dictator’s wardrobe’ is remembered, Stephen Gundle observes, especially for his eccentric attire mixing elements such as spats with bowler hat, or twotone shoes with pullover and belt, as depicted in the image (Fig. 11.9)

43 John Woodhouse, Gabriele D’Annunzio. Arcangelo ribelle (Rome: Carocci, 1999), p. 27. 44 Ibid., pp. 21–27. 45 Luigi Martini, Rossa: immagine e comunicazione del lavoro: 1848–2006, 2 vols (Milan:

Skira, 2007), II, p. 81. 46 Roger Hargreaves, ‘Daily Encounters’, in Daily Encounters: Photographs from Fleet Street, ed. by Hargreaves, p. 36. 47 Silvio Bertoldi, Camicia nera. Fatti e misfatti di un ventennio italiano (Milan: BUR, 1994), p. 62.

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Fig. 11.9 Mussolini beginning the foundations for the new Militia headquarters in Rome, 5 November 1934

an original dress code which has remained better known than the more conventional clothing he often wore.48

48 Stephen Gundle, ‘Mass culture and the cult of personality’, in The Cult of the Duce, pp. 78–81.

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Although dress code was a key part of his image, it was when Mussolini removed his clothes, or his ‘armour’, that he appeared to project the image of a popular hero. The famous images of the Duce threshing may be considered within this logic. The Luce image from 1938 of the Battle for Grain was a much publicised propaganda event (Fig. 11.10), reproduced in the press, for example in Corriere della Sera and Giorgio Pini’s biography, L’Illustrazioine Italiana. The photograph of the Duce’s body half-clothed met the requirements of a propaganda image, conveying virility and athleticism while demonstrating the accessibility of the ruler,49 who came across as spontaneous even though the photograph was completely staged.50 The images of the Duce stripped to the waist seem to show him in touch with his ‘real’ self. This was due to his being part of a constructed image that was not completely faked or purely the result of him being histrionic and also due to the use of a visual code that fitted with the time and character. As Pirandello noted, there was, in the representation of the Duce, a genuine reflection of his character that made him, as the author defined, the interpreter of his own part, meaning that Mussolini was the conscious agent of his own image before being its interpreter. ‘He created a character partly based on himself, and partly on that which Italians wanted him to be’.51 In the image ‘The battle for grain’, editorial manipulation aimed at eliminating distance between Mussolini and his people, and another image from the same event, not approved for publication, makes one question why, since the Duce looks in very good shape (Fig. 11.11). Like an actor in a film, bare-chested with his flat-cap, this is an excellent shot of Mussolini that was probably refused publication due to him being surrounded by soldiers.52 Photographed waist up, the contrast between the light and shadows on his body accentuated by the soldiers in shadow and the white-naval uniform ensured that Mussolini here, seen side-on, dominated the page, his figure seemingly detached from the background. Unlike a true peasant, who would rather keep his shirt on to protect his skin from the sun or sharp tools, the shirtless Mussolini was intended to 49 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 71. 50 Enrico Menduni, La fotografia (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008), p. 87 (ills. 50–51). 51 Sergio Luzzatto, L’immagine del duce. Mussolini nelle fotografie dell’Istituto Luce

(Rome: Editori Riuniti, Istituto Nazionale Luce, 2001), p. 51. 52 Due to the presence of photographers and the staged impression, this image was possibly not published; see Franzinelli and Marino, Il duce proibito, p. 75.

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Fig. 11.10 An image from the Battle for Grain in Aprilia (Rome) 4 July 1938, published on the front page of L’Illustrazione Italiana 10 July 1938, in Corriere della Sera and Giorgio Pini’s biography in 1939

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Fig. 11.11 From the same event in Aprilia (Rome) 4 July 1938, this image was not considered appropriate for publication (Luce Institute/Alinari Archives Management, Florence)

stand out and fulfil the role Italians expected him to play, the disdain of liberal bourgeois values and the celebration of the rural. If published next to the crisp, decorative officers’ uniforms, his bare chest rather than virile pride could have risked provoking ridicule, or worse, conveying vulnerability. This event also produced a further image of Mussolini this time alone against a neutral background, his naked torso retouched to eliminate body-hair (Fig. 11.12). Reproduced in 1938 as a postcard for circulation beyond the event, this photograph was decontextualised to extend its relevance allowing the viewers to project their personalised identification with the Duce’s persona.53 Yet another image again from the same series was of a type favoured by Mussolini at the later stage of the dictatorship showing him in contact with the people (Fig. 11.13). 53 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 133.

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Fig. 11.12 A postcard from 1938, with the chest hair retouched, and to the right another image from the series published as a drawing by Beltrame in La Domenica del Corriere on 17 July 1938

If Mussolini’s originality were to be viewed within a broader context, the images of him as Duce undressed usually showing his torso, perhaps considered by him as his best ‘feature’, do not merely express an act of rebellion against bourgeois etiquette. Situated within the visual culture of a developing modern society characterised by conflict was a paradox between the idea of the new and nostalgia for tradition which Mussolini strived to exploit. Committed to regenerate the nation by focusing on the power of the myth, Fascism’s programme of rebirth drew from existing established narrative conventions related to the sacred. Not exclusively religious, the supernatural matrix of sacred imagery of Mussolini’s representation could derive also from allegorical and pagan models, in which the Duce sometimes appeared as Christ or as a king.54 The parallel between Christ’s charismatic authority as head of the Church and

54 Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, pp. 192–193.

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Fig. 11.13 This type of image showing the Duce among the people was much used in the later years of the regime. Postcard, Aprilia, Rome, 1938

the king’s institutionalised authority was obvious enough,55 and in the context of the campaign for a rural Italy, Mussolini’s half-naked body, fixed and isolated through photography, was able to convey both the traditional image of the Duce-Saviour, whose body was offered to Italians as if a sacrifice, and at the same time as a ‘progressive’ politician, who reduced the message to its extreme essence and enhanced its maximum accessibility performing thus an act of modern communication. Yet, the use of nudity was not limited to a subversive communicative tool in order to break the code of political conformism, but also to maintain Mussolini’s popular and populist appeal and demonstrate his virility with a further element of sexual enticement. The Duce unclothed also played an important role in the redefinition of gender and as a model for the new Fascist man. Brutal and strong, but 55 Bryan S. Turner, The Body & Society (Los Angeles: Sage, 2008), p. 151.

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also creative and genius, the idea of a Nietzschean superman revised by prominent pro-Fascist intellectuals and theoreticians such as D’Annunzio, Sarfatti, Papini, Corradini or Bottai corresponded to the projected image of a Mussolini ‘superhuman’,56 with a stress on virility, youth and athleticism. Against the supposed moral and cultural degradation of Italians, Mussolini’s project for regeneration and restoration of the state, as well as the individual, emphasised the importance of the body to the extent that this became a key element in Fascism’s ideological theorisation.57 The ambition was to ‘create a self-contained, well ordered, pliable and repressed body (white and male) whose sole objective was to serve the cause and the interests of the nation and preserve its wholeness’.58 Fascism conceived life as a ‘struggle’ ‘serious, austere, religious’, where men must be ‘active and engaged in action’ to become ‘instruments required for achieving victory’.59 Enshrined as Mussolini’s official definition of Fascism, this widely published, cited and translated entry of ‘La dottrina del fascismo’ (1932) in Giovanni Gentile’s Enciclopedia Italiana did not allow for any form of pleasure associated with the body, since sexual behaviour, intimacy and fashion had to be functional ‘to the full realisation of Fascist discourse’.60 It is, however, important to remember that even though dominant, Fascist diktat was not the only cultural influence to foster desires and personal aspirations. Recent studies in cultural consumption have contested the idea of Fascism presented as ‘a mass society, with popular culture harnessed to the organisation of consent’, and have demonstrated how Italians during the regime were also influenced by modern cultural forms that were starting to develop.61 The introduction of new media on a mass scale, such as cinema, radio and photography, contributed to the circulation of images projecting 56 Gigliola Gori, ‘Model of Masculinity: Mussolini, the New Italian of the Fascist Era’,

in Superman Supreme: Fascist Body as Political Icon – Global Fascism, ed. by J.A. Mangan and Frank Cass (London: Portland, 2000), p. 32. 57 Jose N. Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, LusoBrazilian Review, 2, 39 (2002), 65–77 (p. 66). 58 Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, p. 66. 59 Jeffrey Schnapp, ed., A Primer of Italian Fascism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 2000), p. 47. 60 Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, p. 66. 61 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism

to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), preface, ix.

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sexual behaviours and gender role models different from the established and acceptable, even though not manifested in open antagonism with Fascism.62 The Fascist Saturday cited in an Arbasino article as an ‘unbearable imposition’ when ‘compulsorily laden with grotesque harness that rendered any movement or play impossible’,63 plus an improbable quantity and variety of rituals, functions, marches, state funerals and more, although pervasive, was perceived and absorbed in different grades and shades among the population.64 Repression and representation, the combination of forbidden, with seduction, could thus present problems, since Fascism supported the idea of a body ‘desexualised and de-eroticised’ and it was against the ‘unruly passions and appetites’ that the body on display evoked.65 The photographic projection of the Duce’s body, and especially when unclothed, needed to come to terms with this contradiction. Photography had a long history of representing the nude body, especially women, principally for artists and pornography produced for private consumption within a private space, ‘implying a sense of the hidden, the illicit, and of the secret’.66 The male nude, which had dominated the arts in earlier centuries, had always been the personification of ideal virtues, and being considered in the context of art was desexualised through references to classical iconography. As the medium of realism, photography brought the debate about the legitimacy of the nude to another level; painting was a matter of the soul, while photography a matter of science. Treated as taboo and associated with homosexuality, photographs of male nudes had to be ‘hidden’ or camouflaged to make them socially tolerable in officially moralistic times.67 After the First World War, due to modern sport, the back-to-nature movement and the beginning of modern nudism, the male nude was seen in a different light. Photography promoted the male nude through the cult of the body made healthy by physical exercise, which could be perceived as a revival

62 Ibid., pp. 1–23. 63 Alberto Arbasino, ‘Il Canto del Pipistrello’, La Repubblica, 11 July 1983. 64 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, pp. 200–201. 65 Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, p. 66. 66 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 123. 67 Peter Weiermair, The Hidden Image: Photographs of the Male Nude in the Nineteenth

and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987), p. 11.

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of the Greek ideal of a sane mind in a healthy body, and which was beyond suspicion of eroticism.68 The ideal of the man had changed to the physically fit, muscular body, so that dancers and athletes became favourite models,69 as represented in several studies by a renowned studio photographer active in Rome from the Thirties, Elio Luxardo (1908– 1969) who realised studies of Primo Carnera and other athletes of the 1930s.70 Aesthetics played a determining role in promoting the stereotype of the new Fascist man, of which the culture of the body beautiful was an important symbol. The portrayal of role models whose posture projected self-control, with muscles emphasising virility, symbolised the dynamism and discipline Fascism thought society lacked and needed. With Fascist thought and practice, the healthy and strong body in a healthy mind could stand in contrast to the old ‘decadent and sick’ bourgeois society led by ‘feeble, effeminate and desexualised’ leaders.71 Often addressed in his biographies, the theme of sport was a vital element in the construction of a charismatic Duce. Detailed press-accounts of the Duce’s lifestyle accompanied by the many photographs distributed via the press informed Italians about the strict daily sporting activity to which their Duce was accustomed to.72 On a typical day, he would ‘proceed to an hour’s riding’, followed perhaps by one of the many activities he regularly practised, such as fencing, swimming, tennis, football and even golf.73 Mussolini’s photographs as action man did sometimes exhibit flesh, as in the famous series of him skiing in 1937 at the new Terminillo resort, high in the Apennines to the east of Rome, when in one shot in the snow, the Duce is stripped to the waist, holding skis-sticks, with a black cap on and smiling but with no skis (Fig. 11.14).74 In another series playing tennis in shorts, Mussolini shows his legs, while the series taken in Riccione at the end of 1930s shows the head of

68 Ibid., p. 15. 69 Ibid., p. 19. 70 Luca Violo, ed., Luxardo (Milan: Motta Editore, 2000). 71 Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, p. 66. 72 In Giornale, November 1934, Istituto Luce published ‘Le attività sportive di

Mussolini’, in Pierre Sorlin, ‘Divo in mare, in cielo, in terra’, in B/N547 Bianco e Nero (Rome: Carocci, 2003), p. 53. 73 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 211. 74 Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle, p. 74.

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Fig. 11.14 Mussolini at Terminillo. This Luce image was part of a series, some clothed and some bare-chested, of him skiing from early 1937. Selected images from the same series were published in the press, as was this one in L’Illustrazione Italiana Sportiva on 28 January 1937

government strolling on a beach wearing only a swimsuit, a pair of black trunks (Fig. 11.16). In his mid-50s and fit, the Duce was taken while walking on the beach and when still in the water, in both full length and close-up, in different poses and even though sometimes he looks to the side his body was mainly photographed frontally. In this series, he is portrayed while walking on the sand, standing in shallow water with his hands on hips, never looking at the camera and not smiling. Although obviously aware of the attention from the surrounding public and the photographer, Mussolini seems unfazed about being recorded in a context and mode of dress (or undress) that was a radical departure from the accepted norms of representation for a head of government. Despite the extraordinariness of the situation, Mussolini’s body language, his way of standing before the photographer, his martial pace and stern expression do not seem to differ from his usual manner, as if his familiarity with the camera allowed him to feel as comfortable as if on a parade in uniform.

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Fig. 11.15 Left, Mussolini skiing reinterpreted as an action drawing, on 7 February 1937, in La Tribuna Illustrata, with the caption ‘Il Duce, accomplished sportsman’ allowed himself an excellent physical diversion skiing bare-chested on the snowy slopes of Terminillo. He was accompanied by Romano, the youngest of his sons (Disegno di Vittorio Pisani). To the right, an image from the same series was considered appropriate for the foreign market appearing cropped and inverted in a French periodical on 27 January 1937 (Fototeca Gilardi)

From the same series, one shot in particular is worth noting, a photograph portraying Mussolini on the beach of Riccione in 1933, with the Chancellor of Austria Engelbert Dollfuss who, dressed in a suit and tie, holding his hat and jacket, probably due to the heat, walks between the Duce and his son-in-law Ciano, minister for press and propaganda, who is also in swimming trunks (Fig. 11.16).75 Such an image offers further aspects on the role of Mussolini’s body in the construction of his

75 The caption accompanying the image quotes: “Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss flew to Riccione on the Italian coast for an interview with Benito Mussolini. The Duce was swimming, so Dollfuss hired a boat, picked him up, and they both went into conference undisturbed on the water. In this image Dollfuss on left, and Mussolini walk ashore on the beach in Riccione, Italy after their conference on the water on 24 August 1933.

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Fig. 11.16 Mussolini, Ciano and in between the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss walking on the beach at Riccione, 19 August 1933 (Fototeca Gilardi). This, and the image of Mussolini standing on a boat, photographed on the same day, were published and circulated locally as postcards. The image of Mussolini swimming also appeared in the first number of the new supplement, L’Illustrazione Italiana Sportiva on 3 December 1936

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cult and highlights some visual clues depicting the contradictory relationship between the model of a healthy body and its exhibition. Examined within this logic, this daring combination underscores the importance of Mussolini’s image management as part of an emerging code of representing politics that was influenced by new communication technology and commercial practices.76 In stark contrast to the short Austrian chancellor dressed in a two-piece suit, the Italian dictator’s body, albeit undressed, is even more emphasised. The Duce looks stronger, fitter and overall in better shape than not only Dollfuss, but also his younger son-in-law. In this image, despite its having been taken outdoors, the ingredients exalting the relation between body and nature are not present, and the camera does not insist on the perfection of bodies but rather on their physical performance which is enhanced by the relationship between the objects in the composition. Mussolini’s body gathers here a dimension of stardom he is contained and defined by the gaze of the surrounding crowd arranged in a single seemingly endless line. Mussolini’s body unclothed as a political space ‘where virility, strength and health as a hallmark of Fascist rhetoric’77 was here inscribed into a charged area sexual in content ‘allow[ing] scopophilia (Freud’s term for the pleasure of looking) to dominate, but does so in terms of a passive subject and an active eye with absolute power over what it sees, and upon which it looks as an invisible presence’.78 The erotic charge of Mussolini’s image marching unclothed was not provoked so much by the Duce being almost naked but by the challenge that the display of flesh represented within an established visual cultural code. The audacity of the vision was compounded by his unclothed body caught between a duplicate gaze and a construction that subverted the traditional treatment of male personality. Rather than facing the camera (and us), Mussolini looked sideways or down and by being looked at, instead of looking, the dictator evoked the wholly passive nature of the image and deferred to a female ideal based on notions of passivity. By changing the terms of reference, the spectacle of Mussolini’s body undermined the conventions for male portraits and the association with dominance: encased within a public space and gaze, the Duce’s nudity

76 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, p. 51. 77 Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, p. 67. 78 Clarke, The Photograph, p. 130.

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related to ‘an index of beauty and passivity’ that deferred to a femalebased ideal.79 Through a kind of hybridisation among photographic genres, this image embraced the visual formulae pertaining to male and female realms allowing to be consumed by both. Beyond propagandistic strategies, the image reflected also the influence of modern cultural forms such as cinema. The majority of films seen in Italy between 1920s and 1950s (excluding the war) were American. Over this period, the concession of new exhibition licences rose notably.80 Going to the cinema became one of the most appealing recreational activities and films consequently influenced personal aspirations and ideals, particularly codes of representation. Hollywood stars, perhaps in reaction to imposed sobriety and patriotism, were particularly admired, and through the many photographs that circulated, their looks and fashion were followed and imitated. The growing mass culture, where people could enjoy more free time and sport, saw an increased visibility of the body and at the same time a challenge to existing norms of behaviour and sexual mores, including nudity. During the interwar years, it was not rare to see photographs of actors and actresses in swimming costumes similar to the Mussolini image.81 The fascination that Hollywood manifested towards the Duce was well known as was how his body and histrionic gaze became the embodiment of his charisma.82 Likewise, the dictator demonstrated a liking for American comedies and actors, such as Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy.83 In 1926, the Chicago Evening American described Mussolini as a movie star, by strictly correlating his physical appearance and his role character: ‘He is a dominator, born to dominate and his face shows it: fear is utterly unknown to him’.84 Hollywood viewed the dictator as more than a passing infatuation. He represented a fascinating past with its archaeological and natural landscape, as well as Italy’s cinematic melodramas and historical epics.

79 Ibid., p. 105. 80 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 146. 81 Ibid., pp. 64–74. 82 Giorgio Bertellini, ‘Duce/Divo: Masculinity, Racial Identity, and Politics Among Italian Americans in 1920s New York City’, Journal of Urban History, 5, 31 (2005), 685–726 (p. 695). 83 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 278. 84 Bertellini, ‘Duce/Divo’, p. 695.

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Compared to exotic and grand Hollywood, the popular seaside resort of Riccione was certainly not as suggestive but perhaps precisely because of this more useful for propaganda purposes. Understated but popular enough among Italians, it was the ideal scene to demonstrate the appeal of demure lifestyle with a hint of ‘glamour’ that was able to project a modern image of Italians by then well in tune with Fascist ethos, with a mix of free time, sport, healthy outdoor activities and cult of the body beautiful. Mussolini’s masculinity, personalised and sexualised by photography, assumes particular significance when considered in specific historical circumstance. Taken the year previous to the assassination by Austrian Nazis Dollfuss who was left to bleed on the Vienna Chancellery floor in July 1934,85 the political value attributed to Mussolini’s photogenic charisma during the strategic initial stage in the Nazi-Fascist relationship is evident. Already a ‘real-life celebrity and perfect exemplar of the modern star’s charismatic relationship with his fans’,86 the image of the Duce’s tanned body reflected more than success at a personal level. Having just met his twenty-one-year-old mistress Petacci could have been a reason enough to boost the middle-aged dictator’s ego. Yet, Mussolini’s flaunting sex appeal takes a different perspective when seen in opposition to the ‘menace which the solidification of Hitler’s regime was bringing to international relations’.87 The image of the Duce-sunbathing, designed to awaken desire and elicit passions, when integrated into a political context that underpinned life in Europe and the way diplomatic business was transacted, as the rise of Hitler, lends itself to more than one interpretation.88 The Duce’s Hollywood-style visual code, rather than confidence, may reflect the insecurity he felt as a consequence of the appearance of a bond between Italy and the new Germany.89 As mentioned before, Mussolini when removing his clothes, or his ‘armour’, still appeared strong and perhaps even more powerful and convincing than when dressed. It was a visual device that could help counteract a moment of personal insecurity when facing a 85 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 282. 86 Bertellini, ‘Duce/Divo’, p. 696. 87 Bosworth, Mussolini, p. 280. 88 Ibid., p. 264. 89 Ibid., p. 265.

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critical political moment. ‘Political terrorism’, ‘sterilisation programmes’, ‘domestic repression’ and ‘colonialism’ were terms increasingly present in both early 1930s German and Italian policies, and worked concurrently with the ‘revival of philosophical vitalism and idealism’ that was very much essence and a rooted component of the vitalist conception of Fascism,90 and of which the body, and the unclothed body, was a symbol. ‘Nudity’ worked as a multifaceted and multipurpose visual form that could be adapted, serving Fascist programmatic objectives according to differing political situations. ‘Stylish virility’ specific to Fascism and Mussolini’s political project was an original91 and effective visual code able to translate elements from old iconographical traditions comprehensible to a society in transformation whose tastes and aspirations were susceptible to modern forms of technology such as photography. From his coming to government, Mussolini represented change. His novelty was also projected through his photographic representation which was immediately taken up and distributed through the press. The specific characteristics inherent to the photographic medium, its infinite reproducibility and ‘simultaneous affinity to reality and fantasy’,92 kept the representation of Mussolini’s body in line with the times and modern enough to translate the need for politics to become visually intriguing and accessible to the masses. The growing urban culture in which Fascism was initially formed made full use of contemporary communication techniques to evoke enthusiasm from its followers, aiming at stimulating the imagination and rousing emotions to create a new identity.93 With the progression of mass culture, Fascism produced a language that was symbolic, colourful and at times self-referential and with little substance. Although based on a highly stereotypical repertoire, this language contributed to the process of modernisation.94 The masses, in their function as a backdrop to the regime, became the passive audience 90 Ornelas, ‘The Fascist Body in Contemporary Portuguese Narrative’, p. 66. 91 This term is used by Mark Neocleous when commenting on the politics of the body

in Fascist discourse, see Neocleous, Fascism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), p. 82. 92 Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 90. 93 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 51, 56, 57. 94 Alberto Abruzzese and Davide Borrelli, L’industria culturale. Tracce e immagini di

un privilegio (Rome: Carocci, 2000), p. 177.

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for the leader. To capture their attention, the leader had to appeal to Italians and present himself both as one of them and as a superior individual, who through a convincing and communicative style attempted to shape them in his own image. Mussolini favoured the use of photography as a modern and ‘demotic’95 medium transcending gender and class division to communicate stylised themes and simplified codes, thus provoking the necessary emotional involvement to transform Italian their values and customs according to new Fascist principles.96 It is possible to read the anthropological revolution intended by Mussolini through his use of a language that was also adopted in advertising. Mussolini’s body fragmented through dress, postures, expressions and even his idiosyncratic tics, such as the holding of both hands on hip, the rolling of the eyes or hand gestures, when fixed in images and repetitively presented, became visual slogans recognisable no longer by a select few, but ideally the millions who he sought as his fans.97 His figure was infinitely reproduced through fragmentation to the extent that people were meant to recognise him even when only partly visible, as long as some elements of his visual shorthand were in evidence (Figs. 11.17 and 11.18).98

95 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 71. 96 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 50–51. 97 G.Bottai, Diario 1935–1944, in Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 54–55. 98 A significant example of this can be seen in a drawing by Raimondi from a photo-

graph, printed on the front page of La Domenica del Corriere on 6 March 1938, after the ‘Sorci Verdi’ transatlantic flight, showing Bruno Mussolini obscuring much of his father as they embrace, yet with only a fragment of his jaw, ear and neck being visible, the figure is unmistakably Benito Mussolini.

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Fig. 11.17 A postcard of Mussolini kissing a child dressed as a Balilla, signed and dated Anno XIII (1935) from a photograph published in La Domenica del Corriere, 1934, no.40, part of a series of images of the Duce among the people. The cut-out image of Mussolini with a young child, ‘Bacio ad un Balilla’ (kissing a Balilla), was a common theme and often reproduced

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Fig. 11.18 Published in La Domenica del Corriere on 6 March 1938. This drawing by Beltrame, who worked from photographs, shows the Duce greeting his son Bruno, and even though his face is obscured, Mussolini is instantly recognisable

CHAPTER 12

Marketing Mussolini

In recent years, the rapid development of the cult of the Duce has been considered from a broader perspective with analyses focusing on the multifaceted context, political, economic, social and cultural, in which Mussolini became a global icon.1 This concluding chapter concentrates on the growing commercial culture in which the cult of the Duce developed from the mid-1920s, with particular focus on the financial and entertainment appeal of his photographic image. While emphasis will be on the marketing of Mussolini’s image, with him acting as a ‘sponsor’ in exchange for exposure and increased opportunity to connect with his ‘customers’, it is not the intention to trivialise his role as dictator, nor to shift the focus and ignore other oppressive and intimidating factors that underwrite dictatorial regimes, such as the role of violence and its ever-present threat. Mussolini’s ‘charismatic voice’ and rhetorical talent transposed into his photographs were communicated as if still images from a silent movie,2 with his voice, face, hands and movements not only emphasised but also exaggerated. Mussolini’s facial expressions and gestures recorded through photographs built on the effect of his early political interactions, when the implication of violence was brought to

1 See, Stephen Gundle, Christopher Duggan and Giuliana Pieri, The Cult of the Duce (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013). 2 Microphones for public address were not used before 1928.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_12

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the fore in the practical organisation of the Fasci.3 The application of merchandising and marketing intentionally employed subliminal registers, and concentrating on these aspects with regard to the distribution and circulation of Mussolini’s image adds a further layer to the multifaceted dimension of the cult.

The Rapid Growth of the Cult in the Mid-1920s During the Matteotti crisis (1924–1925), Mussolini was not seen to be in complete control of events which is in stark contrast to the ‘man of providence’ he became soon after and with such remarkable rapidity. Christopher Duggan has compared Mussolini’s swift growth to an ‘orchestrated political campaign from above to intersect (…) with pre-existing popular aspirations and cultural templates’.4 A conscious manipulative effort from ‘above’ together with the various agents active in the propaganda machine such as journalists, writers, supporters and (later) photographers, enabled the Fascist Party to connect with pre-existing receptive cultural forms and institutions. The glorification of Mussolini served as a political alternative in the absence of a focus for national cohesion.5 Historical circumstances in Italy prior to the First World War formed a cultural and political environment where a centralising symbolic figure could come centre stage as a new form of ‘sacralised leadership’.6 Mussolini had long been perceived, at least from 1919, as having an exceptional personality. Appearing ‘different’, he represented a new form of politics that appealed to many of those who had survived the harrowing experience of war then felt their contribution ignored—‘I warmed to him hugely straight away’, a young Florentine bersagliere wrote in his diary when hearing Mussolini speak at a reception in Milan in 1920.7 As a journalist and activist, he seems to have developed the ability to connect 3 Schmölders, ‘The Face That Said Nothing: Physiognomy in Hitlerism’, in Unmasking Hitler: Cultural Representations of Hitler from the Weimar Republic to the Present, ed. by Klaus L. Berghahn and Jost Hermand (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), p. 16. 4 Christopher Duggan, ‘The Propagation of the Cult of the Duce, 1925–26’, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 27. 5 Duggan, ‘Political Cults in Liberal Italy, 1861–1922’, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 12. 6 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 7 Duggan, ‘The Propagation of the Cult’, in The Cult of the Duce, ed. by Gundle, pp. 29–30.

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with people (though not everyone and not all the time) and make them feel good about themselves and about him. Either during a period of national optimism, or, as it was post-First World War, a time of bitter division and much pessimism, is a personal trait politicians developed to project charisma. Although not effective in every instance, it appears to have worked for Mussolini and helped carry him into Palazzo Venezia and soon after as an exceptional individual able to monopolise attention by increasing his audience. The accelerated growth of the cult in the mid-1920s, and elimination of opposition under the central authoritarian figure of the Duce and his supporting cult, provided a focus. Expectations for a new strong leading figure were seen to be embodied in his physical features, the intense gaze, the strong jaw and his theatrical gestures, exuding energy, authority and leadership. Mussolini could be perceived ‘magnetic’ and ‘electrifying’ as comments and letters of the time testify.8 Yet, personal traits alone cannot explain the unconventional emergence of Mussolini in the traditional political realm of post-war Italy. Plausible reasons were social and cultural, as Stephen Gundle suggests, contrary to the USA where modernity was driven by consumption, in Italy, as with the rest of Europe, politics was often the vehicle for change.9 Politics adapted communication techniques to influence content as the abstract nature of ideologies was gradually substituted with personal and physical qualities of the leader.10 Through politics the state was actively committed to modernising the country, through a regime aspiring to transform Italians by shaping their values and adapting their customs. Although industry was often complicit, the relationship between the world of consumption and that of the regime was not always linear, let alone simple. The inherent contradiction of Fascism having to share power with monarchy and the Church was also reflected in its relationship with commodification that was influenced by a different level of economic development between

8 Duggan, ‘The Propagation of the Cult’, in The Cult of the Duce, pp. 30–31; on collective euphoria and how ordinary people related to Fascism and the cult of the Duce, see Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy (London: Vintage Books, 2013). 9 Stephen Gundle, ‘Mass Culture and the Cult of Personality’, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 75. 10 Fabrice D’Almeida, ‘La trasformazione dei linguaggi politici nell’europa nel Novecento’, in Propaganda e comunicazione politica. Storia e trasformazioni nell’età contemporanea, ed. by Maurizio Ridolfi (Milan: Mondadori, 2004), p. 37.

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North and South, urban and rural.11 In order to pursue its ‘anthropological revolution’ in a diversified social and economic national context, some technological innovations in support of commercial initiatives were adopted by the regime. Spectacularisation of politics became increasingly conditioned by techniques similar to those employed in advertising such as brevity, emotionality, simplification, repetition and persuasiveness, to ensure efficacy of the message while being noticed on the political stage.12 Through repetition, the suggestive effects of newly coined slogans, catchphrases or even single words would join together in the ‘consumer’ or follower’s mind to ‘in the end, create a want or need that he/she did not have before’.13 For example, according to one of the key figures in the Interior Ministry, Guido Leto, the term OVRA used for the Fascist secret police, was not an acronym but a word created by Mussolini who as a journalist was familiar with formulaic language and punchy titles. This mysterious term was perhaps chosen for its sounding similar to piovra (giant squid) and thus provoking both curiosity and fear, to conjure up a mental image of a tentacular police able to control an individual as well as the entire country.14 As a modern and sociological phenomenon, the celebration of Mussolini emerged in an increasing urbanised and industrialised society. Innovations in communication and transport contributed to transforming the spatial organisation in which fabrication of the Duce’s cult took place.

Material Values in a Changing ‘Mosaic’ Society To better understand the relationship between consumption and the development of taste and the values created with the advent of capitalist

11 Stephen Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce: l’immaginario del consumismonell’Italia degli anni Venti e Trenta’, in L’arte della pubblicità. Il manifesto italiano e le avanguardie 1920–1940, ed. by Anna Villari (Cinisello Balsamo: SilvanaEditoriale, 2008), p. 48. See also, Ferdinando Fasce, Elisabetta Bini, and Bianca Gaudenzi (eds.), Comprare per credere. La pubblicità in Italia dalla Belle Époque a oggi (Rome: Carocci, 2016). 12 Francesca Santulli, Le parole del potere il potere delle parole: retorica e discorso politico (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2005), p. 42. 13 Adam Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism and the American Dream: Advertising in Interwar Italy’ Social Science History, 25, 2 (Summer, 2001), 151–186 (p. 167). 14 Guido Leto, Ovra (Bologna: Capelli, 1951), p. 52.

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production in Italy, what follows lays out the factors which contributed to the development of the cultural industry and its aesthetic codes. Between the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, society in the major capitals of Europe had undergone profound transformations. The disappearance of feudal regimes based on a system of self-consumption and consequently with the decline of aristocracy, privileges and wealth lost their original paternity but not their desirability. Through a progressive participation of the lower classes in public life and the diffusion of information, mass culture began to form into a ‘mosaic’ society with differing levels of cultural repertoires, ‘high’ and ‘low’, as well as ‘private’ and ‘public’.15 No longer rigidly hierarchical and linked to hereditary privilege, society became complex and mixed with the world of entertainment as bourgeois values replaced those of the waning aristocracy.16 Money replaced class as the parameter through which social barriers were defined. Thanks to the rapid and progressive technological development, productivity of work improved, encouraging large-scale market production and pursuit of profit. The rules governing monetary control extended to the wider public and private spheres with the development of stock exchanges and financial mediators. The triumph of the bourgeois industrial society began a new period which saw progress of science and techniques with the improvement in the material conditions of life and work.17 Technological progress made goods visible and therefore more desirable, but not necessarily more easily accessible. The reproducibility in series promoted through the attractive display of goods created the illusion of luxury and expectation for everyone. Through display and consumption, an attempt was made to grasp and fix a growing fragmented and unsettling reality, increasing the opportunities for social aggregation, which in theory could be shared by all the urban classes via exhibitions and films. During the early phase of mass society increased press circulation, the birth of modern advertising,18 the invention of the

15 Alberto Abruzzese and Davide Borrelli, L’industria culturale. Tracce e immagini di un privilegio (Rome: Carocci, 2000), p. 139 16 Stephen Gundle, ‘Mapping the origins of glamour: Giovanni Boldini, Paris and the Belle Epoque’, European Studies, 29, 3 (September 1999), (p. 269). 17 Abruzzese and Borrelli, L’industria culturale, p. 145. 18 Adam Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism and the American Dream: Advertising in Interwar

Italy’, Social Science History, 25, 2 (Summer 2001), 151–186 (p. 152).

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radio and the development of visual media such as photography ‘redefined the world symbolically’.19 The speed of technological innovations tended to decontextualise objects. Display and ostentation of merchandise of the great universal exhibitions or the illuminated shop windows and department stores assumed a compensatory function giving body to new mythologies. Modern man, through secularisation and the reification of reality, compensated for the lost human dimension with industrial products becoming surrogates for inexhaustible desires and pleasures. In an increasingly complex cultural and social environment, the affirmation of material values conditioned communication and culture according to market constraints. The image produced by the cultural industry of the twentieth century proved to be an effective mediation tool for a new public where illiteracy was still prevalent. The cultural industry of the early twentieth century began to fulfil its main function: to communicate in order to publicly promote an attitude that favoured the consumption of goods. The public became attracted by the clamour of who or what managed to stand out amid the increasing massification. In these conditions, there was a proliferation of messages and a ‘vulgarisation’ of content, themes became stylised and messages simplified. Mass culture, through stereotypes, produced a spectacular, symbolic language which despite being self-referential and lacking in real content contributed to large-scale modernisation and socialisation opportunities. The bourgeois life model imposed the supremacy of the industrial product, with the progressive massification of social relations, the cult of money and flattening of the collective taste.20 A transformation that found its natural place in the new industrious and industrial cosmopolitan metropolis, in which an expanding social and economic life lay ahead where perception was altered by the projection of images through lenses and screens, thus expanding the realm of the visible through photography and film.21 As visibility became the parameter of social redefinition, the new elite were those who stood out via photography and the visual media. Advertising hoardings, neon signs, places of entertainment like dance halls 19 Alberto Abruzzese et al. (eds.), ‘900: un secolo innominabile (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1998), p. 101. 20 Anty Pansera e Maurizio Vitta, Guida all’arte contemporanea (Torino: Petrini editore, 1994), p. 27. 21 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 74.

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and cinema, exciting new editorial offices, scandalous intellectuals, motor racing, beautiful women and fashionable characters were all seen by an undifferentiated audience.22

Advertising and Visual Persuasion in Fascist Italy In the attempt to substitute petty bourgeois concerns with a ‘new ordered national culture’23 could Fascist propaganda grab the attention of ‘consumers’ through clever headlines alone? Or maybe in the developing Italian marketing culture of the 1930s did the regime and Mussolini need to generate more detailed, sophisticated marketing strategies. Since propaganda, intended as communication from an organised group employing techniques to persuade others, cannot operate in isolation,24 the regime’s visual persuasion was part of reality and a progressively technological one as related to modern mass media propaganda.25 Despite limited diffusion and a relatively small internal mass market, reality in Italy was similar to the one lived by millions in the rest of Europe and in particular those who lived and worked in large urban centres which promoted consumption. Shop windows displayed goods for sale; cars, buses and trams travelled noisily through the streets; popular entertainment with fashionable men and women frequenting cafes, browsing shop windows or newsstands to buy newspapers, books or the growing number of illustrated magazines.26 In the nascent mass society, the growing ‘vulgarisation’ of a world irremediably dominated by money was reflected in the mass audience, frantically searching for personal affirmation and idols.27 The emergence of the elaborate style on fashion sets, photographic advertisings or film studios became associated with commercial

22 John Woodhouse and Gabriele D’Annunzio, Arcangelo ribelle (Roma: Carocci editore, 1999), p. 55. 23 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 158. 24 Gundle and Forgacs, Mass Culture, p. 214. See also Jacque Ellul, Propaganda: The

Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. xii, who takes a pragmatic approach by focusing and analysing the characteristics and effectiveness of propaganda as ‘systems’ and ‘sociological phenomena’. 25 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 8. 26 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, p. 47. 27 Gundle, ‘Mass Culture’, p. 73.

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persuasion strategies.28 Glamour, spread by the media and in particular by the Hollywood star system, developed in America from the 1930s.29 In Italy, the power of persuasion to purchase through a particularly seductive presentation of industrial products was proposed and imitated between the two wars as the recipe for the American dream of freedom and success, and the foundations were laid for the subsequent use of Hollywood glamour in post-Fascist Italy.30 Italian publishing and the press, dependent on finance from industry, banks and political parties, became powerful and influential political tools. From ‘artisanal’ to an ‘industrial’ phase,31 writers, journalists and intellectuals were professionalised, and the press set to become a modern and industrialised publishing operation developing a diversified appeal with a more commercial approach towards authors and the market. Alongside the refined, a more commercial literature was developed. Authors such as Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) understood the importance and power of a seductive relationship between word and image in a world where visibility made individual social identity accessible and at the same time exclusive. Likewise, intellectuals such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), the leading figure of the Italian Futurist movement, through self-referential and self-conscious forms of meta-art, projected a ‘mediatised self-idealisation’.32 Fascism was defined by the journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer (1892– 1977) as a ‘syndicalist-orientated rebellion welcomed by the déclassé bourgeoisie and frightened industrialists’ and ‘an impulsive youthful revolt that called for a disciplined cult of patriotism and authority’.33 Destined to guide the nation to new imperial splendour, Fascism was committed, through authoritarianism, to forge a new type of Italian 28 Stephen Gundle, Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy, 337–

357, in Rudy Koshar (eds.), Histories of Leisure (Oxford: Berg, 2002). 29 The word ‘glamour’ entered common usage at precisely this time, which show how images of wealth, luxury and beauty were more widely deployed than previously before and were consumed by an eager audience, in Gundle, ‘Mass Culture’, p. 74. 30 Abruzzese and Borrelli, L’industria culturale), p. 140. 31 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 156. 32 See W.L. Adamson, Embattled Avantgardes: Modernism’s Resistance to Commodity Culture in Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 81–82. 33 John Patrick Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 15.

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not only through violence and intimidation but also manipulating traditional images and myths at mass level. Stable sets of values and ideals such as masculinity, militarism and sacrifice seemed to be able to coexist with the more ‘free floating world of symbols’ that made up the persuasive and seductive language of the emerging consumer and entertainment society.34 In the process of secularisation of the modern era, where traditional appeals and religious symbols were losing effectiveness, consumption and entertainment represented a bridge between religion and politics.35 A synergic effort from journalists, architects, artists and advertisers among others all contributed to creating a panorama of consumption full of imaginative aspects. Since consumer goods were seen as a medium of governing and transforming the everyday life of Italians, the emerging advertising industry proposed, or was encouraged to promote, a consumer culture that was centred on collective rather than individual concerns, ‘on the nation rather than on the self’.36 Consumption could help shape a material environment to ‘civilise’ and nationalise, thus creating modern Fascist life defined by Giuseppe Bottai as an ‘Italian form of rationalisation’.37 Not only could advertising help increase sales but also have a civilising impact on the world. Modern commercial activity needed to rely on proven techniques and a more methodological rigour in the American style and ideologically based on the theories of French psychology. Mussolini was a fervent admirer of the French polymath Gustave Le Bon and his theories on the Psychology of Crowds in which through the use of media and public space individuals can be turned into crowds.38 Mussolini acted on the concept where advertising ‘if correctly executed, could make people abandon their individuality and take on new needs, desires, and habits that had been conditioned from the outside’.39

34 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 157. 35 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, p. 52. 36 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 155. 37 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 161, cit. Giuseppe Bottai, ‘Razionalizzazione

italiana’, L’ufficio moderno (June 1930). 38 Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (French: Psychologie des Foules ) first published in 1895. 39 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 166.

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Le Bon’s manual was often copied in Italian publications on advertising theory,40 creating a school of thought influenced by the idea that most human actions were conditioned responses to external stimuli. Le Bon and other French psychologists, such as Jacques Gérin and Charles Espinadel, claimed that people’s minds ‘were shaped by the social environment tending to assume the characteristics of the mass in which they were momentarily absorbed’.41 This should not necessarily be just an actual mass of bodies in a public space but also an imagined mass of fellow newspaper readers.42 A more scientific approach was used to establish which graphic form would be more appealing to the sensibility of the audience. In order to prove the universal understanding of images, a poster competition where judges would be illiterate was proposed. Advertising technicians claimed that through effective publicity, the audience or crowds, thoughts or habits, could be manipulated and it was possible to shape and form consumers almost at will.43 Giorgio Pini, editor of Il popolo d’Italia, the newspaper founded by Mussolini in 1914, commented in 1937: ‘Advertising is no longer the expression of private interests without any aesthetic unity, but has been made into a force of substantial social change’. This was made possible through the social collective and corporative function that advertising fulfilled, in cooperation with the regime, its economic policies and its supreme directive.44 In 1936, Bottai, an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that modern politicians should take advantage of the new media and opportunities for communication, wrote in his diary that the participation of the masses in political life required the same attention and the same publicity procedures as those from industry and commerce. In mass politics, leaders have to appeal to fantasy and feelings, and they should impose their face, gesture and words through constant photography and film. ‘Repeat, repeat, repeat’, just as in advertising.45 The 40 Ibid., p. 165. 41 Octave Jacques Gérin and Charles Espinadel, La publicité suggestive (Paris: H. Dunod

and E. Pinad, 1911). 42 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 166. 43 Ibid., p. 168. 44 Giorgio Pini, ‘La pubblicità – il giornalismo fascista,’ La pubblicità d’Italia (Il popolo d’Italia August–September 1937). 45 G. Bottai, Diario 1935–1944, a cura di G.B. Guerri (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982), p. 112; from Giuseppe Bottai, Venti anni e un giorno (Milan: Garzanti, 1949).

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regime aspired to organise a common national culture and a new modern national collectivity. For example, alongside state-organised courses and publications in home economics and domestic work, modern forms of lifestyle and products, such as gas stoves, were publicised and encouraged (Fig. 12.1).46 Communication became paramount and thus also its organisation. The revaluation of the lira in 1927 favoured the strengthening of the home market with manufacturers taking advantage through advertising to sell their products.47 As the demand for advertising increased, so did the selling of advertising space. Print media relied extensively on publicity revenue and dedicated much of their editorial content to the thematisation of consumption, addressing more limited segments of the public, and some newspapers, for example sport, marketed their audiences as particular consumer segments.48 Mussolini on occasion even spoke at international advertising association conferences.49 The advertising agencies thought it important to coordinate publicity across different media: newspapers, weekly magazines, sport and trade journals, posters, shop windows, even theatre, cinema and radio with campaigns integrated around a central theme. Different media meant that the language and form of advertisements had to address and be adjusted to the particular qualities of different audiences. Around the mid-1930s, the conception of consumers as a homogenous mass was increasingly replaced by advertising to appeal to the consumer’s subjective perspective.

46 The regime invested in the education of housewives, through courses in home economics held by the afterwork organisation OND (Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro) and the Fascist women’s organisation, the Fasci Femminili, see Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 160; De Grazia 1992; Meldini 1975; Salvati 1993. 47 Giulio Sapelli ‘La razionalizzazione della vendita, alle origini del marketing in Italia’, Quaderni di Sociologia n. 2-3-4 (1978), 134–151. 48 Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 169. 49 In 1933, Italy hosted the conference of the Continental Advertising Association with

speeches by Mussolini. At the conference, it was estimated that 802 companies, agencies and offices work in advertising, with a turnover of about 300 million lire; by the mid1930s, advertising had become a recognised profession started by people who had working experience in the USA, in Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism’, p. 170.

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Fig. 12.1 Triplex gas stoves advertisement in 1933 from a publicity brochure for Fiera di Milano

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Mussolini for Sale According to his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini was ‘un uomo dal titolo a otto colonne’ (a journalist through and through) and thus ideally equipped and positioned to realise that circumstances were mature for politics to absorb the appeals and motifs of a consumerist type.50 The amount of requests from businesses, professionals, photographers and the like for publicity space using or alongside images of the Duce can help to measure how effective his image was considered as a selling device when associated with products.51 As the regime wanted to influence the clothing, free time and domestic life of individuals, inevitably it would operate in the same sphere as consumer products and the modern communication industry.52 Fascists were weary of the growing desires and temptations of American materialism preferring to promote the obligations of the individual to society. Rather than wealth and financial freedom, they promoted a collective spiritual fascistisation. Mussolini substituted commercial brands with the political, using his image through a repetitive and insistent system of communication that was both sensational and emotionally charged. There were many differing sectors seeking to commercialise their products through association with the name or image of the Duce, who in turn decided whether or not to grant permission: such as leisure and consumables, where logos and imagery could evoke or be associated with Mussolini; body and discipline, with emphasis on the idealised male figure with Mussolinian traits easily associated with the ideals of courage, virility and spirit of adventure. Although culturally in contrast to the promoted Fascist model of physically healthy women ready for motherhood, his female equivalent was proposed through association of his evoked presence with campaigns showing women reading, bicycling in trousers, driving cars, such as the well-dressed women seen on posters for Rinascente.53 There were ceramic factories that reproduced

50 S. Gundle, ‘Mass Culture’, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 75. 51 The Central State Archive in Rome conserves all the requests that were submitted to

commercialise Mussolini’s name or image, S. Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, in L’arte della pubblicita, p. 55. 52 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, p. 55. 53 S. Gundle, “Un Martini per il Duce: l’immaginario del consumismo nell’Italia degli

anni Venti e Trenta”, in L’arte della pubblicità. Il manifesto italiano e le avanguardie 1920–1940, ed. by Anna Villari (Cinisello Balsamo: SilvanaEditoriale, 2008), p. 66. On

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and sold terracotta busts and medallions of Mussolini, and even a car radiator-grille cover with Mussolini’s profile. Interestingly, a request for drinking glasses with Mussolini’s image and text saying ‘Toast your Duce with the fine wine of Italy’ was rejected not because he was teetotal but because it appeared to endorse financial speculation.54 In 1923, Mussolini visited Perugina, an important chocolate confectionery company, and praised its famous product Baci Perugina. The company was authorised to add his comment to publicity images seen in some newspapers and magazines. Among the many commercial sectors where the regime successfully stimulated the imagination and provoked emotions aiming to create a new identity were the aviation and motor industries. Symbols of modernity and technological progress, airplanes as with motorcycles, represented speed, daring and courage. The Duce, through his propagandists,55 moulded his image to create the illusion of dynamism. For example, Mussolini was often represented riding a motorbike, driving a racing car56 or piloting a plane, all means of transport suggesting technological progress, courage, sense of risk and the ability to change and control direction. When linked to commercial products, photographs, such as the Duce riding his Guzzi Falcone Sport 500 motorbike, could also have been intended to increase the sales of the product,57 what in advertising is now called ‘subliminal technique of persuasion by association’.58 Motorcycling in particular encapsulated concepts promoted by Fascism that the Duce himself would often embody when riding or being photographed close to motorcycles, such as virility and aggression which were purposefully countering the negative vices associated with bourgeois lifestyle such

Fascism and the female image, see S. Gundle, Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 80–106. 54 ACS, Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, 1937–1939, b.20. f. 1, Sottofascicoli vari. 55 On the propagation of the cult and some of the early Duce’s supporters, see Christo-

pher Duggan, ‘The Propagation of the Cult of the Duce, 1925–26’; Simona Storchi, ‘Margherita Sarfatti and the Invention of the Duce’, in The Cult of the Duce, pp. 27–40 and pp. 41–56. 56 In 1935, Mussolini bought a new 6 cylinder, 2300cc. red Alfa Romeo which he entered for the Mille Miglia car race; in Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, p. 139. 57 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, pp. 58–59 and pp. 64–65. 58 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London:

Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 95.

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Fig. 12.2 Postcard featuring the Duce visiting the motorbike Gilera exhibition in 1934, Rome

as the unmasculine sedentary existence of the ‘pantofolai’, a term used by Mussolini to describe the antithesis of the ideal Fascist man.59 The images of Mussolini associated with motorcycles alongside the abolition of motorcycle tax in 1933 contributed to increasing their popularity60 (Fig. 12.2). Illustrated magazines and postcard publishers gained considerably from the commodification of Mussolini through the use of his photographic image. Postcards even though reproduced for commercial reasons were considered within the category of pocket-size sacred images or relics and

59 “But we, even though we recognise that the current political situation is delicate, do not share the excessive concern of the usual ‘pantofolai’ wrote Mussolini in his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia, 13 September 1919. 60 Gundle, ‘Un Martini per il Duce’, p. 59.

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therefore tolerated and reproduced without centralised control.61 For example, the publisher Vittorio Emanuele Boeri, who made considerable profit from postcards, rather than following official protocols, preferred to convince various Fascist organisations to directly sponsor his editions.62 An example of this is shown when in 1936, after republishing a previously approved edition, Boeri was called in person before Mussolini to be told that authorisation granted two years earlier for the use of his signature was not automatically renewable.63 Ballerini&Fratini, one of the biggest postcard publishers, also produced portraits of the Duce principally for profit and worked continually during the regime without being members of the P.N.F.64 Postcards were reproduced by the million but there were also vast quantities of flyers, brochures and books of every type promoting Fascism and its leader. ‘There was a continual flow of printed copies and literary manuscripts, of literary, artistic, and musical nature’, wrote the new secretary of the P.N.F. Achille Starace in 1932,65 and the greater part of the eight million or so postcards with Mussolini’s image that circulated during the regime was produced and sold by private companies.66 Mussolini, and later Hitler, realised the symbolic and financial value of their portraits, and from the 1930s, Mussolini’s images had become a lucrative business.67 In Italy, there were those who were directly employed and controlled by the state, for example Istituto Luce, but also those who worked independently. Whatever the level of fascination the

61 Enrico Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce (Turin: Edizioni del Capricorno, 2003), p. 62. 62 Ibid., p. 62. 63 Ibid., p. 64. 64 Ibid., p. 45. 65 ACS Segreteria del P.N.F., Foglio di disposizioni, 5-X-1932. 66 Sturani, Le cartoline, pp. 60–65. 67 According to the Istituto Luce, little paper documentation regarding the sale of Mussolini’s images can be found in their archives. The only document, from 1937, is of an administrative nature describing Fascist propaganda photographs internal selling instructions at Luce which shows that images were for sale to both government and private entities, is preserved in the State Archive, Archivio di Stato di Forlì - Archivio della famiglia Paulucci di Calboli -Giacomo Barone - Carte relative agli incarichi presso” “Istituto Luce”, 1925–1940, bb.12.

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Duce really exerted on Italians, many realised that Mussolini was a profitable subject.68 However, in contrast to Hitler who with his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and his publishing house earned royalties for the use of his image making him extremely wealthy,69 Mussolini does not appear to have received money directly from the selling of his photographs.70 Although Mussolini did not benefit directly commercially, we can gain an idea of the monetary value of his image from the series of portraits taken by Ghitta Carell in 1933.71 Normally, the tariff for this fashionable photographer was around 2000 lire per sitting, a sum at that time considered a good monthly salary for a senior manager. Of course this figure was negotiable, and in the case of photographing, the Duce was obviously not contemplated. Photographing such an important subject would only serve to increase her professional reputation and legitimise her place as the favoured society studio photographer. Following the sitting, Carell delivered the photographic proofs in an album to the Duce’s private secretary for Mussolini’s approval. She was looking to sell some images either as

68 Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture, p. 216. 69 On Heinrich Hoffmann’s commercial success as Hitler’s official photographer, see

Claudia Schmölders, Hitler’s Face: The Biography of an Image (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 43; Fabrice D’Almeida, High Society in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), pp. 113, 127, 129, 150, 224; John Fraser, ‘Hitler’s Cameraman’, The British Journal of Photography, 40 (1985), 1108–1112 (p. 1111); and Steven Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State (London: Phaidon, 2008), p. 26. 70 The notion of Mussolini not profiting from commercial success of his image was confirmed by the historian Adolfo Mignemi and the author Enrico Sturani who referred to a visit to Romagna, Mussolini made sure the expenses of the local photographer Zauli were paid. The ‘Ordine di Servizio’ from Archivio di Stato di Forlì - Archivio della famiglia Paulucci di Calboli - Giacomo Barone list the strict instructions Luce staff were subjected to for the selling of photographs. Another document, from the same archive, adds further explanation: “Photographers consign the negatives, print copies, rejects and two copies of the purchase order to their Manager. Once checked the Manager should send the approved prints and negatives with a copy of the purchase order to the Sales department. The Manager should keep the rejects and provide the photographer with the second copy of the purchase order duly stamped and dated”, in Archivio di Stato Forlì, b.247: Ist. Naz. Luce, reg. ff. 4–5: Istituto Nazionale Luce. Regolamento dei Servizi, Sezione IV-Produzione fotografica, art.191. 71 The information reported in this section on Ghitta Carell can be found in the recent biographical volume Roberto Dulio, Un ritratto mondano. Fotografie di Ghitta Carell (Monza (MB): Johan&Levi, 2013), pp. 38–44 and pp. 28–33.

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individual reproductions, many of which would eventually be bought for and used by the Duce as gifts to guests, but also to grant permission to reproduce in illustrated magazines and periodicals. Some of these images were approved for further editing and Carell immediately registered the copyright of these portraits. A month or so later, she wrote to the Duce asking for a dedication on one of the portraits. Subsequently, copies of this portrait were resold to Mussolini for 40 lire each in batches of 50. A year or so later for both portraits of the Duce and the king, to be fixed in the new university lecture halls at La Sapienza in Rome, the same tariff for the normal dimension and 300 lire for the 38 × 50 cm enlargement were charged, for a commission worth a total of 20,000 lire.72 When the university challenged the price, the architect Piacentini justified the cost by saying: ‘these photographs have been individually reproduced through an involved process, so that each one is a real and proper work of art, as demonstrated by the enormous success they have met […]’.73 It is also evident that publishers looked for context in which to use images of Mussolini to help promote sales. Arnoldo Mondadori republished in instalments the biography of Mussolini Dux, written by Margherita Sarfatti and originally published in 1926. The author recommended including in the publication a series of Mussolini portraits by Carell and Mondadori bought five for 250 lire, subsequently though there was a legal issue about the quality control and copyright. The use of images multiplied across numerous editions must have been profitable as this practice was also shared with other publishers like Ballerini&Fratini who circulated some of the more famous portraits by Carell.74 Enrico Sturani, the leading historian of postcards in Italy, explains that in studying his substantial collection of Mussolini postcards, the majority of their printed credits, on the reverse side, show they were not published by official organisations, but private producers. Although permission was supposed to be granted and commercial use of Mussolini’s image was usually prohibited, in practice, a rigid control on postcards was never properly imposed.75 This was probably due to the propaganda value of these products, and rather than being used, in the vast majority

72 Ibid., p. 42. 73 Ibid., p. 44. 74 Ibid., p. 30. 75 Enrico Sturani, ‘Analysing Mussolini Postcards’, Modern Italy, 19, 2 (2013), 142.

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of instances, they were kept and even treasured as if postcards of movie stars or saints, like relics for devotees. While postcards of Mussolini were produced and sold by commercial enterprises, his image could also be seen on a number of differing media such as exercise books, calendars and posters, all with images sold through private companies originally approved by the regime.76 There is though new evidence regarding the sale of Mussolini’s photographs on behalf of the state.

Mussolini’s Direct Marketing: Bollettino Luce Drawing from their extensive collection of images, Luce looked not only to promote a Fascist agenda but also to attract funds for the state-run corporation. One such initiative was the marketing material for a collection of photographs of Mussolini that could be ordered in various sizes and formats from a brochure, an example of which is the Bollettino Fotografico dated 14 January 1942 which during an extensive research from a variety of dealers specialising in memorabilia I was fortunate enough to purchase (Fig. 12.3). This Bollettino was a single sheet slightly smaller than A3 folded in half to create the brochure. One side shows the title, Bollettino Fotografico Dell’Istituto Nazionale Luce, with a sentence above indicating that the present brochure superseded any previous issues. The rest of the brochure is a catalogue listing photographic images for sale, with indication of prices for different sized reproductions. We do not know with what frequency the brochure was published, the copy in question was sent to a Fascist youth organisation, Comando Gioventù Italiana del Littorio di Albisola Superiore Savona,77 and subsequently, the same brochure was sent to a different Fascist organisation a few months later.78 These brochures must have been distributed to various Fascist organisations and it is fair to assume that reproductions would have been ordered and paid for. The brochure indicates that reproductions were not only 76 Gundle, ‘Mass Culture and the Cult of Personality, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 84. 77 Comando Gioventù Italiana del Littorio di (was printed with a pre-made stamp then

handwritten) Albisola is a municipality in the Province of Savona in the Italian region Liguria. 78 Terzo Maffei, Alessandro Raspagni, and Fausto Sparacino, Ieri ho visto il duce. Trilogia dell’iconografia mussoliniana, Vol. 3 (Parma: Albertelli Editore, 1999), p. 236.

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Fig. 12.3 Bollettino Luce (Luce brochure) 1942 with price list. Note that even though printed during the war, images of Mussolini for sale are not all in uniform, with some from the 1920s, and together they represent a cross-section of his various photographic persona

available to Enti Pubblici (public sector services) at a discounted price, but the ‘normal’ price implied that reproductions were available to nongovernmental services or private enterprises. To further illustrate relative commercial value of Mussolini as a commodity, it is interesting to make a comparison between the prices of reproductions by Luce, which one would imagine had an extensive circulation, to those of Ghitta Carell’s images of Mussolini. The data available allow the following comparison. The normal price for a Luce image from the brochure in format 50 × 65 cm was 30 lire or for public organisations 25 lire each. Carell sold a slightly smaller image 38 × 50 for 300 lire each. It should be remembered though that her images were of a very high standard with limited circulation and were considered works of art.

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The Versatility of Brand Mussolini Of the fifty photographs in the Luce Bollettino or brochure (Fig. 12.3), forty-one are of Mussolini, the remaining of the king and his family. Thirty-five photographs depict the Duce in uniform—typical of his representation during the war. In the brochure, all of the photographs of Mussolini have been chosen, edited and manipulated to such an extent that the traces of their production are erased. They are all cropped and resized to standard passport format, with no caption or date but only a code for identification, almost like an ante-litteram direct marketing of the brand Mussolini.79 Besides the commercial aspect, the Luce brochure is interesting for its iconographical value, documenting the centrality of Mussolini’s image with some of his most familiar and representative portraits spanning a period of at least fifteen years. He is portrayed as a sportsman, soldier on horseback or in uniform as condottiero, with all the typical features and gestuality present. The portraits in profile illustrate his visual shorthand, in particular the strong jaw, shaved head and staring eyes. The brochure is of particular interest because out of the innumerable images produced by the Luce Institute, it tells us which were favoured by the regime at that time. Mussolini, even though Italy was by then involved in a costly war it was losing, appears in this document in various guises, meeting ordinary people, mounted on horseback, riding a motorbike, saluting Roman-style, kissing a baby among others and typical for the date in nearly all photographs he dons a uniform.80 Interestingly, the brochure also confirms that in difficult times the iconography of the politician kissing a baby and meeting ordinary people was as relevant and possibly commercial as those of him dressed in uniform as a military leader.

79 Even though the cataloguing criteria are principally numbers, sometimes followed by a letter, the brochure gives no information about any of the images. Yet the provenance of some of these portraits can be confidently established through their repetitive use in differing media over a period of time. For example, number ‘741’, where Mussolini is making the Fascist salute, was taken in 1940 and was a much reproduced image, published, for example, on the front cover of Giorgio Pini’s 1942 biography. Number 27 shows Mussolini on his motorbike in 1933 in Rome; number 73 on skis at Terminillo near Rome on 1 January 1937 and 747 of Mussolini with helmet in 1940 Rome, similar to many representations published in newspapers. 80 This document was purchased in Italy in 2016 from a dealer specialising in memorabilia.

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With the collapse of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana in 1945 and Mussolini’s definitive removal from power, the iconoclastic fury which struck all artefacts associated with Fascism did not spare the ubiquitous effigies of Mussolini,81 thus attesting their totemic value.82 Mussolini’s execution by partisans on 28 April 1945, and the ignominious scene that occurred the following day—his corpse was dumped together with those of his lover Claretta Petacci and other high-ranking Fascists on Milan’s Piazzale Loreto, to be subjected to the rage of the crowd, before being hung upside down from the roof of a service station—suggested that Italians would never celebrate him again and any commercial benefit from his images would be questionable.83 The trajectory of the Duce’s image exuding physical prowess had a tragic end, becoming paradoxically inverted as documented by the final photographs of his lifeless body (Fig. 12.4). There are no known images of his summary execution and it was not until his corpse was taken to Piazzale Loreto in Milan on 29 April 1945 that photographs were taken of his lifeless body. Dumped on the ground amid other Fascist associates, the object of abuse and derision,84 his body was subsequently strung up by his feet. The ignominious public display ensured that his downfall swiftly became common knowledge, and immediately after the event, some photographs circulated for a while. These compelling and shocking photographs document his defenestration from a lorry and the desecration of his lifeless body by the crowd, and stripped of any badges of rank, his corpse hoisted up mimicking, capovolta, one of his preferred propaganda poses.85 These images could be interpreted

81 Stephen Gundle, ‘The Aftermath of the Mussolini Cult: History, Nostalgia and Popular Culture’, in The Cult of the Duce, ed. by Gundle, Duggan, and Pieri, pp. 241–243. 82 Thomas W.J. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 76–106. 83 See, Sergio Luzzatto, The Body of the Duce. Mussolini’s Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005). 84 Gundle, ‘The Aftermath’ in The Cult of the Duce, p. 241. 85 Capovolta translates as upside down but for an Italian also makes reference to ‘capo’

which means both head and leader, and ‘volta’ change. Caterina Bianchi, ‘Il nudo eroico del fascismo’, 166–167; Mario Isnenghi, ‘Il corpo del duce’, 171, in Sergio Bertelli and Cristiano Grottanelli (eds.), Gli occhi di Alessandro. Potere sovrano e sacralità del corpo da Alessandro Magno a Ceausescu (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie, 1990).

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Fig. 12.4 A postcard showing the corpses of Mussolini, Clara Petacci and some high-ranking Fascists in Piazzale Loreto, Milan, on 29 April 1945. It is one of a series that was privately produced and sold just after the event

as the tragic and collective catharsis for the change of an era.86 Yet, the Milanese authorities had to intervene within days and confiscate the photographs of Piazzale Loreto as they were being offered for sale.87 The potency of these images is reinforced by the fact that these photographs 86 Giovanni Scirocco, ‘La cerimonia della fine. Piazzale Loreto e le sue narrazioni’, in Dintorni. Rivista di letterature e culture dell’Università di Bergamo, Vol. 2 (April 2007), pp. 163–184; Sergio Luzzatto, Il corpo del duce (Torino: Einaudi, 1998), pp. 82–89; On the public display that confirmed the impossibility of Mussolini returning in person, see Mirco Dondi, ‘Piazzale Loreto’, in I luoghi della memoria: simboli e miti dell’Italia unita, ed. by M. Isnenghi (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996), pp. 489–490. 87 On 8 June 1945 Lombardi wrote to the Questore: ‘Dear Sir, I have been informed and personally verified that photographs of Mussolini and Petacci are available to the public, in a variety of configurations after their summary execution. Similarly there are also other similar photographs available. Please can you organise immediate confiscation from shops and any other public spaces where these images are offered for sale as they need to be removed from circulation’ (Archivio di stato di Milano, Gabinetto Prefettura, II versamento, busta 337). The Swiss photoreporter, Christian Schiefer, object of Scirocco’s essay, immediately developed and sent prints to the newspaper Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung, who declined to publish deeming the images too crude. They then crossed the Atlantic and on 1 March 1945 appeared in the New York Times and other important American dailies. Other images taken by photographers such as Fedele Toscani, father of Oliviero, and Peppino Giovi from the press agency Publifoto were also subject to confiscation. See also Sturani, Le cartoline per il Duce, pp. 217–219.

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of his post-mortem public humiliation were only freely circulated once again after many years.88 Images of Mussolini continue to circulate in Italy and abroad, widely on the Internet, in historical publications and in various forms both free and for sale. Seventy-five years since the fall of Fascism, books continue to be published using images from his established iconography, including some from the Bollettino Fotografico Luce 1942. One of those images of Mussolini on horseback in Milan from May 1930 was reproduced as a print and postcard in the 1930s, and ordered in various formats from the Bollettino Fotografico Luce 1942. This and other similar images are still for sale today as original postcards and prints, both on the Internet or through dealers and from the Istituto Luce. In 1942, this image (no. 2 in the Bollettino) (Fig. 12.3) could be ordered from Luce in differing formats from 6 lire for a small image up to 115 lire per square metre. Original postcards have not only kept their value but effectively increased in price, starting from circa 10 Euro, and significantly more for rare examples. Interestingly, current reproductions can be ordered from the Istituto Luce’s collection of images taken during the regime. The continuing commercial value of Mussolini’s photographs documents the ongoing interest in his image. The relation between the desire to sacralise the Duce and the imperative of commercialisation was shown in the Luce brochure selling multiple images of him. The appeal and fame of Mussolini-Duce were, to a certain extent, commercially exploited by the regime as well as private companies.89 The anthropological revolution through which Fascism aspired to transform Italians was influenced by new communication technology and developing commercial practices. Interestingly, his portraits, which were deemed both ideologically significant and commercially viable, document the iconography of the Duce that the regime and its leader wanted us to see and take away. Mussolini’s photographic representation was the result of a selective process which led to an interiorised image of him being formed. Rather than deducing a particular kind of relationship between individual citizens and Mussolini’s projected image, it is perhaps more effective to interrogate the photographs and consider them as forms of communication and figures of speech. Even though images are mute, by

88 Gundle, ‘The Aftermath’ in The Cult of the Duce, p. 241. 89 Gundle, ‘Mass Culture and the Cult of Personality’, in The Cult of the Duce, p. 84.

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decoding the language through which they were composed, the particular forms of representation produced and adopted by the regime can be reconstructed. Reflecting on the construction of power through images, the role of Mussolini’s portraits, when placed into the social and political context of a totalitarian regime, acquires a new dimension becoming ‘special acts of display’ of power.90 While the extent and nature of impact cannot be definitively measured, the communicative role of Mussolini’s portraits at the time of original circulation is evident through their continued use, management and censorship. As political actor, Mussolini was legitimised partially through his portraits appearing in social spaces before an audience who consuming the image conferred and confirmed the political power of the portrait, and therefore by association, Mussolini the person. Although constructed and composed to persuade, as portraits of power, images of Mussolini contributed to generating or defining perceptions of the Duce’s reality that still resonate with us today.

90 Hariman and Lucaites argue that photography through phenomenological devices establishes a performative experience; for instance, through framing, photographs become ‘special acts of display’ in Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 31.

PART IV

Modalities

CHAPTER 13

Conclusion

Rather than using images in support of text, the intention throughout this book was to make photographs of Mussolini the principal subjects for analysis as a primary source. The approach where photographs are treated as historical documents is relatively new in literature dealing with the representation of the dictator, and even when publications or websites reproduce interesting, sometimes rare, or unpublished images of Mussolini, many questions about their origin, production and fruition in relation to Fascist propaganda remain unanswered. Between the two wars, photography became a political propaganda tool as one of the main means of mass communication. The use of Mussolini’s photographs in historical research, in addition to being an expression of a mentality, is often illustrative. Given the accessibility of the Internet in support of the extensive photographic material, finding images is less problematic than reconstructing a contextualised biography of them. In the context of historical research, photographs should be subjected to the same criteria regarding provenance and authenticity as any other primary source and using photographs as historical document is on the increase with archives developing structural sensitivity and support. Since photographs of Mussolini were a form of communication, and therefore in continuous evolution, this book outlines how images were fabricated through a process of selection and manipulation in preparation for their destination, mainly the press. Where photographs are seen is called by photo-historians the ‘site of audiencing’, a term used when © The Author(s) 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0_13

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referring to where the ‘image’s meanings are made and the process by which a visual image has its meaning renegotiated, or even rejected, by particular audiences watching in specific circumstances.1 For instance, a photograph taken of Mussolini on horseback brandishing the sword of Islam, viewed the next day in the press, was subjected to a more limited set of external forces than the same image seen in a publication a few years later, as in Giorgio Pini’s 1939 biography. Initially, possibly due to time constrictions, Fascist propagandists only slightly cropped the image of Mussolini with a sword, whereas in later publications the trajectory of this image illustrates how it was subjected to various and even radical transformations. During Fascism, the site of audiencing stretched to include different social classes, levels of education and gender, where the combination of written text with visual images took the notion of reading to a different level, expanding the gaze substantially. The ‘metamorphosis’ of the negative resulted in images in the press, magazines and books, posters, postcards and official portraits for public display, but also in by-products such as labels, calendars, exercise books covers and wall stencils, which were all seen by large numbers of people. Reading images meant looking at his images, alone or in company, without it being necessary to understand any written text competently2 ; the book identifies significant persuasive strategies adopted throughout the Fascist propagandacampaign,3 which may provoke questions of representation when examining propaganda as a type of communication. Mussolini’s photographs were subjected to precepts or prohibitions normally interiorised at an unconscious level. Photography of the powerful was used as a vehicle to influence people through the illusion of proximity and identification with the intention of furthering a political programme well before it became propaganda in Mussolini’s time. With the advent of modern technology, the interwar public became ever more familiar with the photographic visual code. Just as a particular combination of social and political factors enabled Mussolini to succeed on the political stage, these were also exploited to 1 John Fiske ‘Audiencing’, in Handbook of Qualitative Methods, ed. by N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (London: Sage, 1994) in Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage, 2007), p. 22. 2 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 37. 3 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 2.

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take advantage of the photographic medium in a more efficient way. As a trained journalist, Mussolini contributed to the photographic ‘myth’ that developed around his origins or political identity. At this point, technological developments meant that photography more than any other medium was seen as having a popular appeal, and being accessible was thus relevant to a society in transformation where the notion of participating as a mass and the erosion of social barriers informed the collective identity. Later through the further development of mass culture, the photographic language of Mussolini evolved and the visible result could be expressed in stereotypes which were symbolic, colourful and often simplistic. With central control of the press, Fascist propaganda championed photography as a modern and populist medium engaging the masses while aiming to transform popular values and customs in line with regime aspirations. The juxtaposition of the dictator’s photographic figure alongside publicity presented him as if another product to be consumed. Furthermore, the image of Mussolini’s mass-reproduced figure was subjected to a form of fragmentation by cloning when his multiplied image was symbolically dismembered through diffusion to the masses. This fragmentation was taken to the extreme when even only parts of his body were visible and recognisable, provided that a stereotypical element of his representation was present. The vast quantity of photographic material created during his lifetime, as evident in the wealth of images still in archives, establishes Mussolini as the most photographed personality of his era in Italy. Yet, the reading alone of the photographs gives little or no indication of the extent to which he was the sole editor of his own photographic representation. It is not surprising with his formation as a journalist that Mussolini would not only be aware of the efficacy of photography but that he would ensure the press was an active agent in the propagation of his self-representation. The many variables active during the transition from ‘taking’ to ‘making’ of his image suggest we should reconsider whether Mussolini was the unique author of his own image, at least in practical terms. It has been important throughout the book to question the accepted notion of ‘visual soliloquy’ between Mussolini and the public, since the production of his image was undoubtedly a process, at times complex, requiring the complicity, forced or otherwise, of various contributors. His implicit authorship was further endorsed by the fact that his images were mostly uncredited; an image served to ‘illustrate’ rather than ‘elucidate’ his directives, in a way not dissimilar from the manner in which, on occasion,

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his photographs are still treated. The anonymity of Mussolini’s photographers gave further potency to his images, which were seen on a regular basis forming visual habits necessary to the repetitive ceremonial culture of Fascism. The making of Mussolini’s images was the product of a system of interacting agencies which together played a significant role in the construction of his cult. The cloak of anonymity cast over the creation and management of Mussolini’s images may also have had the consequence of shielding the general public from the realisation that his images were part of a strategy aimed to indoctrinate. At the beginning of the Thirties, the attention dedicated to propaganda, including that from abroad, expanded and intensified. With the populist intention of going ‘to the people’, Ciano, as the Duce’s Press Office’s chief in 1934, proposed a broadening of the discussion to make propaganda, which by then had become a word to be avoided, unidentifiable as such, and he encouraged the use of all means to realise that particular end.4 Ciano’s consideration that ‘no nation wanted to be propagandised but rather ‘informed’5 underlines a developing level of control the regime propagandists had in their understanding of techniques of persuasion.6 By this time, the Ministry of Propaganda, the well-oiled Fascist propaganda machine, was able to make strategic use of all the technical means available, the press, radio, cinema, posters, postcards and meetings, singly or all together, and target, as Ellul puts it, ‘the whole crowd all at once, and yet reaching each one in that crowd’.7 Since Mussolini’s Sorelian concept reduced ‘il popolo’ (the people) to a ‘biological’ crowd, the masses were seen as an indistinguishable block of people easily moved to action by a tactical use of words. Other Fascists such as the younger and well-travelled Ciano might have realised the need for coordinated propaganda and a psychological use of technology with 4 Benedetta Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero. La propaganda del fascismo all’estero (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), p. 31. 5 ACS, Mcp, Gab., b. 4, fasc. 15, promemoria, s.d., s.f., in Garzarelli, p. 31. 6 When welcoming the young Italo-American journalist Giorgio Nelson Page, Ciano

said: ‘Shortly, you will see the founding of an organisation that will become the most important in Italy. Everything will pass through my hands and we will speak to the whole world. We will let other countries know about the Italy that matters. We will use radio, theatre, cinema. And of course, the press. But above all, we will use men’ in ACS, Mcp, Gab., b.4, f.15, promemoria, s.d., s.f., Garzarelli, p. 31. 7 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: the Formation of Men’s Attitude (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), p. 8.

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particular method of penetration similar to the language of advertising. Each medium favoured a certain type of propaganda, and to concentrate and exalt Mussolini’s image, particular techniques were utilised and directed towards producing an effect that, when fused with other media, was meant to ‘reach individuals in a specific fashion, making the viewer react anew to the same theme, in a similar direction, although differently’.8 The emerging awareness by the masses of their involvement in politics was not exclusively a consequence of image management by the regime, although this was exploited. The structure of the book reflects the original tasks identified at the outset as necessary to define the contribution of photography in the construction of the cult of the Duce. The discussion of the means of production could be taken forward, focusing on how in a nondemocratic polity subject to censorial controls, photographs of the Duce were modified by the relationship between the main actors of production and audiences modalities, within a society in transformation that was undergoing an expansion in modern image culture. Part of the photographs examined in my research, such as the images of the arrest of Mussolini or when brandishing the sword of Islam, comes from the close reading of photographic material gathered from archives.9 In propaganda, images do not stand by themselves but often need text as an anchorage; thus, photographs of Mussolini in the press were usually accompanied by captions that could lead the reader to their interpretation. As much as Mussolini’s words could be interiorised differently when spoken directly to a large crowd rather than heard through the radio, so photographs of him could also be subject to differing perceptions when seen as a postcard, poster or a framed portrait rather than when printed in a newspaper. One can assume that even in the same newspaper, depending on how the Duce’s image was laid out, cropped or enlarged, a different response could be provoked.

8 Ellul, Propaganda, p. 10. 9 The photographic material used was copied with permission from Danilo Fullin, the

Director of Centro Documentazione RCS Quotidiani, in April 2008, Milan, and includes images of Mussolini sent to Corriere della Sera, from Istituto Luce, Publifoto, Porry Pastorel, Luigi Leoni, and other sources. Nearly all images were published in Corriere della Sera, Domenica del Corriere, Gazzetta dello sport, La Lettura. The RCS archive is thematically catalogued, kept in boxes and only partially digitalised.

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Photographs, Susan Sontag noted, ‘may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow’.10 However, if viewed out of context or taken in isolation, dramatic and emotionally charged as his image may have been, it cannot generate the same meaning as when seen in printed form. Mussolini’s moving image may have provoked an emotional reaction but the impression left by his photographs was that of a still image fixed in the collective memory. The tenacity of the camera’s claim to credibility put Mussolini’s photogenic charisma under scrutiny.11 In particular, with the Duce’s close-ups, the camera became a device for observing accurate traces of the principal subject, and thanks to the impartiality of its mechanism and lens which together form a ‘perceptual prosthesis’ once set on the correct exposure, will ‘not leave unregistered anything in the field of its gaze’.12 Furthermore, if photographs, as printed material, had played a major role determining the effectiveness of Mussolini’s images across the range of economic, social and political relations, institutions and practices that surrounded his image, a flexible and more holistic approach regarding the action of ‘reading’ could be applied to the site of audiencing.13 In his thirst for public recognition, the Duce’s exploitation of modern media such as the press, cinema and radio worked in conjunction with other more traditional forms of communication. Photographs of Mussolini appearing in print were sometimes also reproduced on book covers, school books, labels and even stamps but also in classrooms, on buildings and even in front of one of the most important cathedrals. Despite newspapers being read by a relatively limited public, the ‘readership’ of the dictator’s image should be considered in a wider sense. The growing yet still irregular pattern of contact through which Fascist Italy interacted with the emerging mass culture documents how the regime considered that there was an effective purpose in the projected image of Mussolini and the basic message it conveyed. Mussolini’s representation was the result of a selective process which favoured an interiorised image of him being formed. This book questions

10 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1977), p. 17. 11 William J. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), p. 24. 12 Ibid., p. 28. 13 Rose, Visual Methodologies, p. 13; pp. 22–27; pp. 196–215.

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whether such a selective process is still relevant given the analytical tools now available to us and considers optional approaches to complement the image of the Duce as a mythical and superhuman figure responsible for creating his own myth and producing propaganda in support of it. The visual, as central to the cultural construction of social life in contemporary Western societies, has developed differing critical tools to direct analysis, which can now be used when evaluating Mussolini’s representation.14 The interaction between power and cultural activities from the public point of view not only included photographers but also the peripheral activities that were responsible for the production of the Duce’s visual imagery. Considering the climate of repression and manipulation during the regime, this book shows the contribution of the creative and communication fields, and establishes their input, thus enabling us to place the visible image, in this instance of Mussolini, within the context of production. Finally, could Mussolini have been portrayed in a different manner and remain effective as the Duce? Did his photogenic charisma influence the outcome of the regime? What we do know is that people looking at his photographic image saw various tones, planes and shapes which were then re-assembled as a silent image transferred into the mind gaining a voice. Exactly how this voice influenced the individual cannot be quantified, but as a collective influence on the construction of his personality cult, photography has been proved to be an essential component. The original prints of Mussolini were, and are, silent. It is what was made, and what we still make of them, that speaks.

14 Ibid., p. 2.

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Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.246: Istituto Luce, f. 8: “63. Savoia (Casa Reale)”. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.246: Istituto Luce, f. 10: “101. Corrispondenza diretta a Giacomo P.d.C.B. durante la sua Presidenza dell’Istituto Luce e dell’ENIC”. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.246: Istituto Luce, f. 72, f. 101. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.247: Istituto Luce, f. 8, c.42, sc 142 Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.247: Istituto Luce, f. 1: “Luce. Reparto cinematografico A.O.” 16 August 1936 – 10 October 1936. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.247: Istituto Luce, ff. 4–5: “Istituto Nazionale Luce. Regolamento dei Servizi”. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.250: Istituto Luce, f. 1: Verbali delle Sedute del Consiglio di Amministrazione. Anno IX, c. 2, sc. 2. “Seduta del Consiglio d’Amministrazione del 31/1/1931 –IX”. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.250 bis: Istituto Luce, vol.1: Ordini di Servizio dal 21 agosto 1933 al 27 dicembre 1933 nn. 1–112, c. 33, sc.33. Roma, 13 settembre 1933 (XI). Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.250bis: Istituto Luce, Ordini di Servizio e comunicati, 1933–1938, vol. 2. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.250 bis: Istituto Luce, Ordini di Servizio e comunicati, 1933–1938, vol. 3. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), b.312 : Istituto Luce, “Cuttings Scrap & Newscutting Book n.4”. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), Benito Mussolini, ‘La Rivoluzione Fascista, divenuta patrimonio morale del popolo italiano, farà grande l’Italia, comunque, dovunque, contro chiunque’, L’Impero, 29 October 1926, front page. Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera (ASCdS) Sezione amministrativo gestionale, amministrazione e controllo gestione, f. 1324, f. 3220. Ministero Cultura Popolare, carteggio personaggi (società o enti), f. 727c, from 6.9.1936 to 12.04.1945, f. 772c, ‘Mussolini Benito uomo politico’, from 9.10.1918 to 10.03.1956, f. 157c, Borelli Aldo Direttore. Diffusione e Vendita, f. 21, tirature La Domenica del Corriere 1899 – 1947. Sezione Amministrazione Gestionale, Tirature Corriere, Domenica, Piccoli, Lettura, Romanzo, June-December-January 1939. Sezione Amministrazione Gestionale, Unità, Produzione, 1920s – 1940s Sezione carteggio, 94C, Barzini Junior.

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Fondo Attualità circa 1,700 images reference checked for Mussolini in the following years: 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937; circa 70 copies of images made. Fondo Porry Pastorel circa 80 images reference checked for Mussolini in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923. Archivio di Stato di Forlì – Cesena (ASFC) Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), Photographic Archive circa 200 uncatalogued random selection of prints checked for Mussolini 1920s to 1940s. 25 copies of images made. Archivio Paulucci di Calboli Barone (ApdC), Photographic Archive, 8 photographic albums relating to trips and visits Mussolini 1930s–1940s. Olycom Archivio Publifoto Milan Fondo Mussolini, 38 envelopes chronologically catalogued, circa 1,500 prints and 45 negative plates checked for Mussolini between the years 1922–1939, and 175 images copied. Centro Documentazione Corriere della Sera Milan Archivio Benito Mussolini 110 folders thematically catalogued for the following years: 1922–1925–1929–1933–1937–1939–1941, circa 673 copies made. Civico Archivio Fotografico Castello Sforzesco Milan Fondo Benito Mussolini circa 200 prints 34 copies made from prints between 930s of Mussolini in Milan including during his arrest and restored photomontage by Luca Comerio 1934 and 16 reproductions. Archivio Cesare Colombo private collection Milan Benito Mussolini circa 200 prints cross-referenced for Mussolini, circa 10 portraits of which two reproduced. Fondazione 3M Archivio Fotografico Milan Benito Mussolini, 25 prints Mussolini, of which 5 reproduced. Fondo Piancastelli Biblioteca Comunale Aurelio Saffi Forlì From Catalogue Mostra Romagna of 15,000 postcards, 3 albums of Benito Mussolini chronologically catalogued of 600 circa photo-cards 1920s – 1940s, 1 album ‘Visita del Duce alla città di Forlì’ by Alfredo Zoli, 6 October 1941 (GL 01 916 CIO 3605) and 1 envelope images of Mussolini (GL01 917 CIO 3613). Fondazione di Venezia, Marius Pictor (Fondo Mario De Maria)

Newspaper Archives Biblioteca Sormani Milan, Microfilm Domenica del Corriere, 1925–1926, from issue 27, 5.7.1925 – until issue 50, 12.12.1926. British Library Newspapers Colindale and Microforms Corriere della Sera 1922, 1925, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938, 1940.

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Illustrazione Italiana 1922–1930 1940–1942. La Domenica del Corriere 1940–1943. Il popolo d’Italia 1941 and 1942. The Sphere, front cover, and p.279, 16 December 1922 and Herbert Vivian, ‘Benito Mussolini, the Italian Premier’, The Sphere, 16 December 1922, p. 296. Daily Herald, 11 December 1922, “Signor Mussolini with his personal attendant and bodyguard”, Mussolini with a Blackshirt. Nicholas Farrell, ‘The Italian stallion’, The Sunday Times, 26 February 2006 L’Illustrazione Italiana, 24.01.1937, front page. Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele Rome Mille facce per un Duce, La Repubblica, Sunday10/Monday 11 July 1983. ‘Uled, dei cavalieri della leggenda’, Illustrazione Italiana, 19 March 1937. Quadrante, ‘Mussolini. Luglio del Patto a Quattro, n. 4, p. 5 and Ghitta Carell (on Mussolini’s portrait no title), Quadrante, n. 6, 1933, pp. 45–46. ‘Mussolini, Marinetti e Vella arrestati a Roma per incidenti di interventisti e neutralisti, Il Giornale d’Italia, 12 April 1915, front cover. Attilio Bolzoni e Tano Gullo, ‘A spasso col Duce. Vizi e amori nel diario dell’autista’and Nicola Caracciolo, Il Leporello di Benito, La domenica di Repubblica, 28th November 2004, p. 37. Il Progresso Fotografico, years 1932–1933, 7 pages copied. Archivio Storico Corriere della Sera (ASCdS) Milan La Domenica del Corriere, front covers, 1919–1923 and 1934–1938 checked for Mussolini, 15 copies made. Biblioteca Comunale Aurelio Saffi Forlì, Emeroteca f.c. (Francesco Ciccotti) ‘Benito Mussolini’, La Lotta di Classe, 13 January 1912, front page and 2nd page. ‘Il Fascismo saprà difendere l’incolumità del Duce’, Il Popolo di Romagna, Anno V, n. 37, 19 September 1926, front page. Carlo Crema, no title, Il Popolo di Romagna, 14 April 1923, front page. Archivio Fototeca Storica Nazionale Ando Gilardi Milan Giuseppe Turroni, ‘L’impeccabile gusto di Ghitta Carell’, Prestigio, November– December 1969, pp. 1–10. Collection press cuttings Exhibition Ghitta Carell from Stampa e Pubbliche Relazioni Ferrania 3M, 1970. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense Milan, Sala microfilm Corriere della Sera, 100 images checked for Mussolini years 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 10 pages copied. La Domenica del Corriere, 416 issues checked for Mussolini, years 1917 and 1939, 60 pages scanned. Illustrazione Italiana, 364 issues checked for Mussolini, years 1922,1923,1926,1934,1936,1937,1938, 60 pages scanned.

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La Gazzetta dello Sport, 12 issues checked for Mussolini, year 1935, 3 pages scanned. Il Popolo d’Italia, 12 issues checked for Mussolini, year 1917, 2 pages scanned. Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, 12 issues checked for Mussolini, year 1935, 4 double page scanned. La Lettura, 1932, 1 image double page scanned.

Filmography Vincere Marco Bellocchio, dir. (Offside and RAI cinema, 2009) [DVD]. Benito Mussolini (Rai Tre 13, August 2010) [Television]. Il giovane Mussolini (Rai Due, 1993) [Television]. Il segreto di Mussolini dir. Fabrizio Laurenti and Gianfranco Norelli (Rai Tre, 13 August 2010) [Television]. Mussolini and I, dir. Alberto Negrin (HBO, 1985) [DVD]. Obiettivo Mussolini dir. Graziano Conversano (Sky History Channel 407, 12–19 May 2007) [Television]. The Sorrow and the Pity: Chronicle of a French City Under German Occupation dir. Marcel Ophüls (1969) [DVD]. Propaganda: The War of the Mind, insight from Chris Read and Robin Lenman. Warwick University, narrated by Graham McTavish (Cromwell Productions, 2000) [DVD]. Tea with Mussolini dir. Franco Zeffirelli (G2 Films, 1999) [Film].

Internet OldMagazineArticles.com The Literary Digest, ‘Fascism’s triumph explained by Italian writers, 23 December 1922. Archivio Storico Luce ‘Discorso del Duce, 25 ottobre 1936, Imola’, in documentari. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iASgGpNqgtw. Daily Mail (on-line version) ‘Commander in briefs: Obama shows off his war chest on holiday in Hawaii’, in 23 December 2008 and Vladimir Putin from Internet.

Unpublished Thesis Giunta, Francesco, ‘L’avventura di Vincenzo Carrese e di Publifoto’ (unpublished Tesi di Laurea in Storia del Giornalismo, Università degli studi di Genova, Corso di Laurea Quadriennale in Scienze Politiche, 2003).

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Hussein, Nesreen, ‘The Representation and Perception of the Body: An Exploration of its Subjective-Objective Duality’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Royal Holloway University of London).

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Index

A Actor, 287 Advertising, 60, 66, 71, 122, 202, 219, 249, 276, 284, 291, 313, 320–323, 325–327, 330, 349 catchphrases, 320 mass society, 321 persuasiveness, 320 repetition, 320 slogans, 320 Aesthetics, 22, 23, 53, 147, 154, 157, 305 Africa Orientale, 98, 107 Agency, 41, 63, 67, 70, 77, 78, 85, 87, 98, 104, 107, 110, 119, 120, 122, 125, 126, 132, 135, 136, 184, 219, 243, 288, 293, 340 Agenzia Stefani, 78 Alfieri, Dino, 79, 198, 221 Alinari, 80, 113, 223 Allure, 157 API, 211 Appetiti, Spartaco, 96, 98–103 Aprilia, 13, 194, 299, 302

Archive, 12, 39–41, 48, 63, 79, 83, 87, 95, 96, 98, 109, 123, 126, 141, 196, 212, 329, 332, 333, 349 Arrest, 18, 42, 74, 125, 237–239, 241, 242, 247, 248, 349 Associated Press, 211 Audiencing, 14, 25, 42, 43, 67, 68, 159, 160, 190, 346, 350 Aural charisma, 31 Avanti!, 224, 237 B Background, 168 Badodi, Attilio, 146, 205 Baird, H.M., 88 Balbo, Italo, 129–131 Ballerini&Fratini, 332, 334 Bare-chested, 34, 99, 101, 102, 104, 194, 298, 306 Barzini, Luigi junior, 93 Barzini, Luigi senior, 93, 113 The Battle for Grain, 121, 298, 299 Bauhaus Modernism, 35

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Antola Swan, Photographing Mussolini, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56506-0

385

386

INDEX

Befana fascista, 158 Belle Époque, 58, 270 Beltrame, Achille, 92, 93, 207–209, 227, 315 Benjamin, Walter, 65 Bernhardt, Sarah, 53 Bersaglieri, 228, 229 Bertoldi, Silvio, 252 Biazzi, Sandro, 4 Biographies, 7, 30, 168–174, 176, 180–183, 200, 226, 227, 305 Blackshirts, 89, 93 Body, 3, 14, 17, 21, 23, 31, 33, 34, 53, 102, 103, 154, 173, 198, 199, 204, 220, 223, 225, 238, 239, 242, 252, 253, 256, 257, 263–266, 269, 277, 282, 288, 295, 298, 302–307, 309–313, 322, 329, 339, 347 clothed, 288 dictator’s, 282 discomposed, 238 disorderly, 242 healthy, 305 heroic, 264 ideal, 257 idealised, 3 invincible, 264 leader’s, 257 lifeless, 339 male, 103 muscular, 252 parts, 347 political, 256 shirtless, 298 solidity, 264 spectacle, 309 toned, 154 uncontrolled, 239 wounded, 242 Boeri, Vittorio Emanuele, 332 Bollettino Fotografico, 335

Book covers, 42, 165 Books, 26, 52, 66, 122, 182, 183, 192, 323, 332, 335, 346, 350 Boratto, Ercole, 96, 97 Borelli, Aldo, 93, 132, 141 Bottai, Giuseppe, 134, 276, 291, 303, 313, 325, 326 Brand, 50, 52, 54, 60, 102, 219, 258, 295, 329 Brochure, 332, 338 Brogi, Carlo, 224 Brooke, Rupert, 103 Bruni, 75, 122

C Caesar, 34 Calendars, 50, 158, 184, 335, 346 Caminada, 260, 261, 263, 272, 276 Capasso Torre, Giovanni, 79 Caracciolo, Nicola, 97 Carell, Ghitta, 22, 57, 63, 75, 147–154, 156, 157, 276, 277, 333, 334, 336 Carpena, 222 Carpi, Leone, 30 Carrese, Vincenzo, 22, 109, 123, 131–133, 135–140, 288 Carte-de-visite, 50–52 Cataloguing, 39, 40, 83, 124, 338 Catholic Church, 59, 283 Censorship, 15, 16, 70, 80, 107, 112, 136, 140, 161, 168, 172, 198, 199, 245, 342 Charisma, 30, 31, 33, 42, 48, 50, 75, 98, 145, 167, 252–254, 256, 260, 273, 310, 311, 319, 351 gestural, 33 histrionic gaze, 310 institutional, 256 photogenic, 260 Chest, 104

INDEX

Ciano, Galeazzo, 72, 79, 86, 120, 160, 198, 203, 307, 308, 329, 348 Claridges Hotel, 89 Cliché, 150, 253 Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 270 Coercion, 28, 283 Comerio, Luca, 111–113 Commercial, 317 Commodification, 319 Commodity, 103, 120, 243, 336 Communication, 15 Condottiero, 205, 212, 278, 286, 338 Conference of the Allied Premiers, 87 Congress of Naples, 5 Consent, 283 Contessa Nettel, 95, 135 Context, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 25, 37, 39–41, 50, 65–67, 69–71, 91, 115, 132, 159, 165–167, 171, 183, 192, 204, 217, 221, 223–225, 233, 238, 240, 248, 259, 264, 265, 270, 277, 301, 302, 304, 311, 317, 320, 334, 342, 350, 351 Contextualization, 40 Contrapposto, 154 Control, 2, 8, 15, 17, 28, 63, 70, 77, 122, 127, 134, 141, 160, 168, 172, 178, 193, 200, 209, 248, 249, 258, 259, 318, 320, 321, 330, 332, 334, 348, 349 Corporeal, 253 Corporeality, 103 Corriere della Sera, 12, 93, 107, 113, 132, 134, 135, 140, 141, 173, 175, 184, 189–192, 194–197, 201, 202, 218, 237, 286, 287, 298, 299, 349 Covo, 173 Crimean War, 112

387

D D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 46, 52–58, 60, 151, 153, 295, 303, 323, 324 Darwin, Charles, 267 Decontextualization, 229 De Feo, Luciano, 77, 78, 85, 86, 107 Della Porta, 266 Del Papa, 122 Demotic, 68, 82, 313 De Poi, Nino, 88, 272 Digitalization, 349 Direct marketing, 338 Distribution, 118 Diversification, 14 Documents, 18 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 307–309, 311 Dominant, 14 Duomo, 42, 133, 262 Duse, Eleonora, 53 Dynastic, 13 E East Africa, 86 Editorial process, 8, 26, 70, 169, 197, 212, 221 Emotional, emotionally, 15, 23, 31, 46–48, 54, 59, 67, 76, 82, 130, 138, 166, 171, 183, 247, 259, 267, 270, 281–284, 329, 350 Equipment, 95 Ernemann, 97, 127 Ethiopia, 91 Exhibition of Fascist Revolution, 95 Eyes, 266 staring, 266 F Fabrication, 22, 23, 25, 28, 320 Face, 264 Fame, 14 Fascist Italy, 8

388

INDEX

Ferretti, Lando, 79 Film stars, 295 Filo Diretto, 222 Finzi, Aldo, 91 First World War, 9, 55, 56, 59, 74, 109, 124, 167, 219, 237, 242, 243, 248, 257, 264, 304, 318, 319 Flammarion, 91, 92 Flyers, 50, 158, 332 Forlì, 83, 84, 87, 95, 96, 99, 233, 234 Forlimpopoli, 224 Fragmentation, 14 Freddi, Luigi, 221 French revolution, 45, 47, 282 Futurist, 54, 56, 324 G Gallup, George, 196 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 16, 34, 46, 48, 50–52, 54, 59, 217, 295 Gaze, 30, 102, 103, 137, 154, 233, 265–268, 270, 274, 277, 309, 319, 346, 350 glaring, 267 omniscient, 266 Genoa, 54, 55, 135 Gesture, 171 Giolitti, Giovanni, 16, 126 Glamour, 65, 147, 157, 311, 324 H Heroic, 287 Historical documents, 345 photographs, 345 Hitler, Adolf, 4, 71, 74, 126, 196, 209, 261, 311, 332, 333 Hoffmann, Heinrich, 74, 333 Holistic, 8, 21, 27, 350 Holldack, Heinz, 221, 222

Hollywood, 74, 269, 310, 311, 324 Hullinger Ware, Edwin, 101, 255, 256

I Icon, 4, 17, 69, 82, 100, 102, 171, 245, 258, 260, 267–269, 296, 317 Iconic, 148, 286 Iconography, 36, 37, 56, 113, 157, 256, 260, 263, 265, 270, 282, 304, 338, 341 Idealised self, 287 Ideological, 15 Il Giornale d’Italia, 124, 126, 240, 241 Illustrated publications, 118 Illustrations, 22 Il Mattino, 93, 141 Il Messaggero, 97, 124 Il Popolo d’Italia, 99, 134, 135, 172, 222, 237, 242, 244, 261, 326, 331 Il Progresso Fotografico, 114 Il Quadrante, 157 Image management, 16, 22, 53, 73, 194, 200, 211, 222, 245, 281, 309, 349 Imagery, 3, 4, 36, 47, 54, 56, 69, 138, 157, 238, 282, 301, 329, 351 sacred, 301 Informal, 149 Intentionality, 28 Istituto Luce, 13, 16, 36, 63, 71, 73–78, 83, 84, 96, 98, 102, 109, 123, 189, 288, 293, 332, 341, 349

INDEX

J Jacques Gérin and Charles Espinadel, 326 Jaw, 150 K Keystone, 132, 211 Kun, Bela, 79 L La Domenica del Corriere, 72, 92, 93, 101, 113, 121, 132, 134, 202, 206–208, 227, 229, 262, 287, 301, 313, 314 La Gazzetta dello Sport , 134, 206 Langhi Serralunga, Giuseppe, 111 La Repubblica, 31, 97, 304 Lavater, 266 La Vita, 124 Law 31 December, 78 Leaders, 251 Le Bon, Gustave, 2, 33, 284, 325, 326 Lega Nord, 12 Leica, 95, 135 Lenin, Vladimir, 35, 36, 79, 215 Leoni, Luigi, 75, 98, 99, 109, 286, 288, 349 Libya, 287 Life, 71, 211 L’Illustrazione Italiana, 93, 101, 111–113, 134, 157, 202–204, 206, 207, 209, 210, 276, 277, 299 Lombroso, Cesare, 30, 266 Lorant, Stefan, 115, 116 Lucrative, 332 Luxardo, Elio, 305 M Magazines, 118

389

Magnetic, 251 Man, Felix H., 115, 116, 125 Manipulation, 28, 112, 198, 200, 283, 284, 293, 298, 345, 351 Mannerism, 68, 252, 257 Mann, Felix, 36 Maria Josè, 120 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 33, 53, 56, 324 Mario de Maria, 57 Marketing, 318, 323, 335 Masculinity, 102, 260, 264, 311, 325 sexualised, 311 Mass communication, 18 Mass culture, 350 Masses, 2, 3, 17, 23, 33, 50, 60, 80, 102, 181, 204–207, 237, 242, 243, 248, 251, 271, 276, 281–283, 312, 326, 347–349 involvement in politics, 349 passive audience, 312 Matteini, Claudio, 141 Matteotti, Giacomo, 16, 78, 123, 124, 184, 318 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 16 Media, 2–4, 9, 10, 14, 17, 26, 27, 33, 54, 65, 67, 70, 71, 78, 79, 105, 118, 166–169, 180, 183, 189, 194, 204, 207, 211, 237, 247, 270, 286, 303, 322–327, 335, 338, 349, 350 Metallisation, 33, 34 Metamorphosis, 18, 287, 346 Minculpop, 80 Ministry of Popular Culture, 79, 86, 141 Moholy-Nagy, Lazlo, 35 Mondadori, Arnoldo, 14, 39, 64, 211, 319, 334 Money, 321 Morgagni, Manlio, 198 Morgantini, Mario, 99

390

INDEX

Mosaic society, 321 Mowrer, Edgar Ansel, 324 Munari, Bruno, 211 Mussolini, Alessandra, 12, 13 Mussolini, Edda, 72, 120, 203

N Namias, Rodolfo, 114 Napoleon III, 60 National Fascist Party (PNF), 4, 77, 221 News, 104 Newspapers, 14 Nietzschean superman, 103, 303 Note di servizio, 141, 142 Nudity, 296, 302, 309, 310, 312

O Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 97 official, 150 oppressive, 14 orator, 171 Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, 125 OVRA, 320

P Pagano, Giuseppe, 211 Palazzo Chigi, 91, 198 Palazzo Venezia, 81, 148, 153, 222, 319 Palmos, 95, 127 Pamphlets, 50, 123, 183 Paparazzo, 111, 127 Paulucci di Calboli Barone, Giacomo, 77, 98 Pavolini, Alessandro, 79 Periodicals, 14 Personalities, 118 Personification, 45, 245, 255, 256, 273, 283, 285, 295, 304

politics, 273 Persuasion, 2, 8, 18, 22, 26, 36, 182, 291, 324, 330, 348 Perugina, 330 Petacci, Claretta, 311, 339 Petitti, Amerigo, 74, 75, 109, 146 Petrelli, Tino, 109, 138 Photogenic, 42, 97, 99, 255, 256, 264 Photographers, 63, 126, 288 Photography, 21 Photojournalism, 36, 70, 109–111, 114, 115, 124, 127, 129, 201 Photomontage, 172, 260, 290 Photo reporter, 126 Physical traits, 236, 243, 252 Physiognomy, 29, 255, 265–267, 269 Physique, 102 Piacentini, 334 Piazza, 23, 237 Piazza del Popolo, 128 Piazzale Loreto, 132, 339, 340 Piazze, 31, 158 Pini, Giorgio, 6, 99, 169, 180, 181, 227, 287, 298, 299, 326, 338, 346 Pin-up, 104 Piseroni, 95 Policy, 118 Political orator, 252 Politics, 218, 319 Polverelli, Gaetano, 79, 80, 140, 189, 198, 199 Polysemic, 11, 39, 56, 216 Populist, 2, 53, 192, 211, 274, 302, 347, 348 Porry Pastorel, Adolfo, 22, 64, 75, 79, 98, 109, 122–125, 241, 288, 290, 291 Porry Pastorel, Alberto, 98 Portrait, 4, 15, 33, 34, 36, 37, 42, 47, 48, 57, 59, 66, 70, 101,

INDEX

102, 129, 134, 138, 145, 147, 149–152, 154, 155, 157, 165, 167, 169, 171, 178, 183, 203, 212, 216, 219, 222–227, 229, 230, 232, 236, 247, 260, 261, 263, 264, 269, 270, 274, 277, 285, 309, 332–334, 338, 341, 342, 346 bodiless, 270 individual, 225 institutional, 225 retouched, 227 romantic, 285 royal, 225 school, 224 studio, 230 symbolic meaning, 230 Portraiture, 147, 222 Pose, 288 martial, 288 Postcards, 7, 14, 30, 32, 47, 50, 59, 104, 115, 134, 158, 165, 183, 192, 216, 217, 220, 231, 261, 308, 331, 332, 334, 335, 341, 346, 348 Posters, 42, 104, 165 Posture, 14, 30, 57, 68, 91, 95, 129, 138, 142, 150, 154, 167, 219, 223, 230, 232, 269, 313 frontal, 269 Power, 1, 2, 4, 8, 13, 15, 23, 26, 29, 30, 47, 52, 56, 63, 64, 69, 75, 78, 98, 103, 109, 114, 119, 150, 154, 161, 193, 200, 203, 209, 211, 213, 217, 218, 229, 237, 247, 248, 252–254, 256, 264, 269, 276, 278, 279, 282, 292, 294, 301, 324, 339, 342, 351 press, 237 Press, 34, 218 Press Office, 70, 73, 79, 84, 86, 104, 140–142, 185, 189, 348

391

Primo Carnera, 197, 305 Prince Umberto, 48 Print, 184 Private, 215 Private Secretary, 73, 84, 148, 333 Production, 7, 8, 23, 25, 26, 28, 35, 36, 42, 59, 64, 71, 77, 79, 80, 82, 91, 102, 105, 110, 115, 134, 158, 160, 202, 217, 245, 248, 259, 321, 338, 345, 347, 349, 351 Profit, 321 Profitable, 333 Promotion, 4, 8, 14, 102 Propaganda, 2, 3, 8–10, 13–18, 28, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60, 64, 70, 71, 75, 80, 86, 87, 96, 109, 114, 118, 119, 122, 146, 159–162, 167, 168, 172, 184, 196, 198, 216, 233, 245, 253, 255, 258, 260, 267, 270, 276, 279, 283–285, 287, 288, 296, 298, 307, 311, 318, 323, 334, 339, 345–349, 351 campaign, 346 centralised, 288 fascist, 347 photographs, 279 political, 71 psychological use of technology, 348 sociological, 71 totalitarian, 276 Public, 215 Publicity, 35, 37, 76, 82, 104, 114, 134, 156, 207, 258, 271, 326–330, 347 Public space, 11, 66, 182, 192, 309, 325, 326, 340 Publifoto, 123, 131, 132, 134, 135, 138, 288, 349

392

INDEX

Punctum, 42 Putin, Vladimir, 104, 106 R Raimondi, Ottorino, 124, 313 Reparto Fotografico del Comando Supremo, 114 Representations, 21 Retoucher, 99 Retouching, 145, 155, 156, 248 Riccione, 99, 305, 307, 308, 311 Riefenstahl, Leni, 36 Risorgimento, 218, 224 Rodchenko, Alexander, 35, 196 Rolleiflex, 95, 135 Roma Press Photo, 98 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 15, 36 Rossi, Cesare, 79 Rotogravure, 202, 206 Royals, 47, 48, 50, 59, 101, 156, 203, 213, 229, 230, 232 Russia, 35, 98, 104 Russian experimentalism, 35 S Sabratha, 96 Salvatori, 122 Sapori, Francesco, 215, 216 Sardi, Alessandro, 77 Sarfatti, Margherita, 169, 181, 227, 243, 303, 334 Sargent, John Singer, 147 Savoys, 46 Scattini, 119 Schmid, Louis, 225, 226, 230 Schreiber, Emile, 216 Scomposto, 238 Scott, Walter, 295 Sebastiani, Osvaldo, 148, 151, 153 Secularisation, 322, 325 Seduction, 146, 264, 274, 304

Seductive, 2, 17, 53, 157, 203, 252, 262, 281, 324, 325 Sensorial, 21, 31 Sexual, 302 S. Galler Tageblatt , 34 Shape, 102 Sicily, 98 Simulacrum, 69 Site of audiencing, 345 Skiing, 103 Socialist Party, 103, 236 Solferino, 112 Sorel, George, 234 Spectacularisation, 22, 31, 53, 320 politics, 320 Spectator, 42, 46, 58, 171, 194 The Sphere, 87, 88, 91, 102 Spinelli, Sergio, 98 Stalin, 30, 36, 216 Starace, Achille, 130, 134, 147, 185, 194, 332 Stare, 154 Steichen, Edward, 270, 271 Stereotype, 305 Stieglitz, Alfred, 270 Studio photography, 273 Style, 251 Stylish, 312 Subliminal, 182, 293, 318 Sulis, Edgardo, 257, 258 Superhuman, 287 Susmel, Edoardo, 170 Sword of Islam, 27, 178, 286, 346, 349 Symbols, 3, 16, 18, 22, 30, 47, 50, 58, 76, 104, 129, 173, 200, 247, 265, 275, 283, 284, 305, 312, 325

T Technologies, 118

INDEX

Tempo, 5, 211, 212, 289 Terminillo, 34, 99–101, 105, 305–307, 338 Theatre, 118 Theatricality, 53 Time, 71 The Times , 97 Toscani, Fedele, 132, 135, 340 Trajectory, 39, 160, 339, 346 Treves, Emilio, 202 Tripoli, 96, 286 Tursi, Mario, 98, 125, 127 Types, 167 ‘activist’, 167 ‘alone’, 171 ‘body’, 167 ‘evoking’, 168 ‘man of action’, 167 ‘man of culture’, 168 ‘oceanic crowd’, 167 ‘origins’, 167 ‘politician’, 167 ‘private’, 168 ‘soldier’, 167 ‘with Hitler’, 167 ‘with King’, 167 ‘with people’, 167 U Umberto I, 111 Unclothed, 34, 103, 295, 302, 304, 309, 312 Undersecretariat of State for Press and Propaganda, 79

393

Uniform, 149 Unique author, 347 authorship, 347 Unmasculine, 331 V Variety, 14 VEDO, 98, 123, 125 Veline, 66, 185, 197–199 Ventennio, 17, 80, 82, 92, 126, 178, 207, 220, 241, 273 Victor Emanuel III, 128 Virility, 30, 34, 137, 274, 294, 298, 302, 303, 305, 312, 329, 330 Visibility, 16, 23, 47, 54, 83, 87, 111, 145, 167, 203, 209, 210, 216, 218, 223, 237, 240, 242, 265, 310, 322, 324 Visual appeal, 31, 234 Visual code, 346 Visual persuasion, 259, 323 Visual representation, 156 Visual shorthand, 194, 212, 256, 260, 277, 281, 313, 338 fragmentation, 313 Visual soliloquy, 347 Visual strategy, 31, 66, 67, 137, 138 Vitullo, 22, 64, 109 W Weberian, 254 Weekly newspapers, 118 Wilson, Woodrow, 126