5 Continents Editions
Editor-in-Chief
Aldo Carioli
Design and Art Direction
Fayçal Zaouali in collaboration with Stefano Montagnana
Editing and Proofreading
Maaiana Corinaldi, Charles Gute, Lucia Moretti
Translations
Julian Comoy, Maria Carla Dallavalle, Marie Jansen, Esfir Bella Meilman
Pre-press and Printing Unigrafica S.r.l., Gorgonzola (Milan, Italy)
All rights reserved
© Istituti Italiani di Cultura di Tel Aviv e di Haifa
© The Authors for their texts
For the present edition © 2023 – 5 Continents Editions S.r.l., Milan, Italy
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ISBN 979-12-5460-054-2
Distributed by ACC Art Books throughout the world, excluding Italy. Distributed in Italy and Switzerland by Messaggerie Libri S.p.A.
Printed and bound in Italy in November 2023 by Unigrafica S.r.l., Gorgonzola (Milan, Italy) for 5 Continents Editions, Milan
The texts in this book were selected by Maria Sica, Director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Tel Aviv, and Roberto Dulio, Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Politecnico di Milano – DABC.
Editorial Coordination
Marina Trivella
Hebrew Language Revision
Tammy Burstein
Graphic Designer for Hebrew Language Section
Yasha Rozov
Abbreviations
FC-IICH: Carell Fund, Italian Institute of Culture, Haifa
FSN-AG: Fototeca Storica Nazionale
Ando Gilardi, Milan
IC-H: Ilana Cohen Collection, Haifa
PC-N: Pinhas Carmeli Collection, Nahariya
F3M: Fondazione 3M, Milan
Cover images
English: Ghitta Carell, Portrait of Giovanna Panza di Biumo Magnifico [1950s]
FC-IICH
Hebrew: Portrait of Maria José di Savoia, glass plate [1935]
FSN-AG
Introduction
Maria Sica
‘I create photos for posterity’:
Ghitta Carell’s Lives and Arts
Roberto Dulio
Ghitta Carell’s Hungarian Education
Norbert Orosz
An Artist and a Photographer Between Two Wars
Sabrina Spinazzè
Florence, Rome, Milan: The Places of Ghitta Carell’s Professional Rise
Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto
Regime Aesthetics in Ghitta Carell’s Photographs:
Edda Ciano and Benito Mussolini
Alessandra Antola Swan
Ghitta Carell’s Punctum
Ugo Volli
An Exile’s Vision
Nissan N. Perez
Ghitta Carell and Her Family: Memories Between Hungary and Israel
Marina Trivella
Roberto Dulio
1 Stephen Gundle, ‘Mass culture and the cult of personality’, 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), 72–90.
2 Alexis Schwarzenbach, ‘Royal photographs: Emotions for the people’, in Contemporary European History 3, no. 13 (2004): 255–80, 263.
3 For the leader’s portrait as a key instrument of propaganda, see Luciano Cheles and Alessandro Giacone, The Political Portrait: Leadership, Image and Power (New York and London: Routledge, 2020).
4 Luisa Passerini, ‘Costruzione del femminile e del maschile, dicotomia sociale e androgina simbolica’, in Angelo Del Boca, Massimo Legnani, and Mario G. Rossi (eds.), Il regime fascista (Bari: Laterza, 1995), 498–506, 500.
5 Paul Ginsborg, ‘Fascism and the Family’, in Family Politics: Domestic Life, Devastation and Survival 1900–1950 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 139–225.
6 ‘Fascism and the allure of the female image’, in Stephen Gundle, Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007) 80–106.
7 Giovanna Ginex (ed.), Divine. Emilio Sommariva fotografo. Opere scelte 1910–1930 (Milan: Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense and Nomos Edizioni, 2004), 35.
8 Eva Nodin, ‘The Illusions of Ghitta Carell: Women Photographers in Italy’, in Gunilla Knape and Lena Johannesson (eds.), Women Photographers, European Experience (Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2004), 114.
9 Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 105; and on the female profile as index of ‘passivity’, see Patricia Simons, ‘Women in Frames’, History Workshop, no. 25 (1988).
10 Fabrice d’Almeida, High Society in the Third Reich (2006; Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 41.
11 Roberto Dulio, Un ritratto mondano. Fotografie di Ghitta Carell (Monza: Johan & Levi, 2013), 81.
12 Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660–2000 (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 41–43.
13 Mimmo Franzinelli and Emanuele Valerio Marino, Il Duce proibito. Le fotografie di Mussolini che gli Italiani non hanno mai visto (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), xi ; and Benedetta Garzarelli, Parleremo al mondo intero. La propaganda del fascismo all’estero (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004).
14 Dulio, Un ritratto mondano, 16.
15 Clarke, The Photograph, 105.
which, through the close-up, transformed Mussolini into an iconic presence implying intelligence, individualism, and, above all, genius.15
Contrary to portraits of women, who, adapting to the standard of passive beauty, faced the camera sideways and were usually looked at rather than looking, the regime favoured the representation of Mussolini as a man who faces the camera (and all viewers), looking the world squarely in the eye. In general, portraits with just the face of Mussolini were often employed to emphasise particular messages or occasions, functioning as ‘loudspeakers’ to draw attention. Carell’s 1937 studio portrait of il Duce in full regalia was cropped and reproduced in 1937 and 1938 in the weekly magazine L’Illustrazione Italiana, such that Mussolini’s face was almost too large for the full page.
Conclusion
Carell’s portraits were not intended for the masses. The regime favoured her work because it helped consolidate the position of Fascist personalities through the circulation of approved images in conjunction with those of the social elite. Her subjects were flattered by pictures that served to confirm their status as important personalities of the time. Carell’s refined compositions responded to a need to create a coherent value structure within a social hierarchy pursuing stability. Her photographic subjects, in this case Mussolini, were flattered by her idealised portraits, which were used to reinforce the regime’s aesthetics. In the representation of the urban upper class, 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 specific objectives; it conveyed an air of openness and diversity, or even modernity and pseudo-cinematic glamour. Her portraits offered a modern allure that helped render an authoritarian system seductive.
1 Hoffman, Eva. The Inner Lives of Cultures. London: Counterpoint, 2011. p. 7.
2 “Between Memory and History: A Writer’s Voice”, interview conducted on 5 October 2000, Regents of the University of California: https://iis.berkeley.edu/ publications/eva-hoffman-between-memoryand-history-writers-voice
3 Kracauer, Siegfried. The Past’s Threshold, Essays on Photography. Zurich: Diaphanes, 2014. p. 61.
