Fotografia e militanza 1968-1977:
il fotogiornalismo della contestazione in Italia
Emma Colombi
Between 1968 and 1977, as Italy undergoes a wave of protests triggering political, social, and cultural transformations, many people began to see photography as a tool for political participation. These were the so-called protest photojournalists, no longer mere witnesses but activists who, by photographing struggles from within and eliminating any distance between photographer and subject, produced images that were formally imperfect yet dense with political and social meaning.
This new form of photojournalism moved beyond simple documentation to become a political act and a form of visual militancy in its own right, promoting and interpreting protest while also bearing witness to and preserving the memory of the period.
The article therefore aims not only to highlight how photography in Italy, between the late Sixties and the Seventies, became a way of life and was able to transform itself from a representation of events into their vivid expression, but also to reflect on the role acquired by visual representation in a society dominated by images.