Working with archival collections is rewarding, particularly when discovering understudied materials. Marina Tzortzakaki (University of Crete) reflects on a significant photographic collection she examined during her internship at the British School at Rome’s Research Collections (February – June 2026).
The Apulia Monumentale series stands at the crossroads of photography and the construction of national identity in post-unification Italy. The collection consists of 235 photographs produced by Romualdo Moscioni in the early 1890s to document the architectural monuments of Puglia. From a historical point of view, the campaign reflects a moment in which photography served as a tool for shaping cultural heritage. This research on the series’ archival holdings at the British School at Rome offers new interpretations of a historically and artistically important collection.
Photography as a political tool in the 1890s
Commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Public Education in 1891, the series aimed to photograph the medieval architecture of the whole Apulia region. Large-scale surveys of this type across Italy intended mainly to turn historical monuments into evidence of a shared national identity (Di Giammaria, 2022). Evidently, even though the Risorgimento ended formally in 1871, the construction and reinforcement of a national identity remained prominent intentions, leading Italy to irredentism. Moscioni’s commission by the Ministry should thus be understood within the context of this political goal: to symbolically integrate all Italian regions into the shared culture of the unified state through a ‘national’ architecture (Caraffa and Paolucci, 2015).
Moscioni seen under a new ‘lens’
Simultaneously to his assignment to document ‘national’ architecture, Moscioni sheds light on the people of Puglia as well. We often see merchants gathered in streets, figures leaning from balconies, children and passers-by animating public squares. His photographs record both the monuments and the social reality of southern Italy in the late 1800s.
While the visual artists of the Risorgimento focused on romanticising Italy’s architecture, landscapes, and society (Saunders, 2016), Moscioni’s pictures are often closer to realism. For example, in Moscioni’s Arco di Traiano (Fig. 1) the focus is the arch, but the decaying background buildings and the empty square – besides a poor child and a peasant woman – are exposed too.
These elements add to the realism of the picture, placing a monument of the ‘elevated’ past in the context of a ‘lower’ present. On the same note, Moscioni’s Castello di S. Nicandro (Fig. 2) depicts a quiet neighbourhood where clothes are hung to dry, and his Casa medioevale a Terlizzi (Fig. 3) emphasises the people rather than the monument; a man leaning on the wall and posing, a woman with a baby on her lap and, interestingly, an old lady with a chicken. These images could be compared to Gardin’s neo-realistic Puglia from 1958 (Fig. 4), which depicts a medieval structure in a neighbourhood in the same region, showing children playing and women doing chores. The comparison reveals similarities between two periods of Italian photography driven by very different political agendas.
Moscioni’s work shows significant artistic sensitivity as well. Although he was commissioned to systematically document architecture, his photographs frequently avoid strict frontal symmetry, instead adopting side angles and carefully constructed perspectives that place the monument within its urban or rural context. In Moscioni’s Chiesa di S. Sepolcro (Fig. 5), the focus is the apse of the church, but the angle allows in balconies, carriages, small shops around the church and people in the square, reflecting the vibrancy of central Barletta.
Reconstructing Apulia Monumentale in the British School at Rome’s Research Collections
Today, the British School at Rome’s Research Collections preserve approximately 225 holdings of the 235 that were originally produced. Of those, 175 have been linked to the collection of Eugénie Sellers Strong, the first female Assistant Director and Librarian of the British School at Rome (1909–1925). Alongside these objects, 51 additional prints survive in the British School at Rome’s Early Photography Collection. These do not appear connected to Strong’s holdings or to the archival records associated with Apulia Monumentale. Although evidently part of the same photographic campaign, the connection between the collections was not made explicit in the archival records. Unlike Strong’s material and other acquisitions from Moscioni’s portfolio mentioned in the British School at Rome’s archival documents, there is no indication on the provenance of these 51 photographs. They also differ physically from the prints connected to Strong: they are printed on larger paper, and they are generally better preserved, showing less curling and foxing. At the same time, the printing quality, tones, and technique are remarkably similar to those in Strong’s archive. These small physical details become important when investigating the history of the two collections.
Reconstructing the relationship between the archival fonds required piecing together evidence, almost like solving a puzzle. Since no proof of the connection between them existed, the primary aim of the study was to demonstrate that they belonged to the same photographic collection. This effort relied, thus, on archival ‘detective’ work: the 225 photographs preserved at the British School at Rome were systematically compared with holdings from Apulia Monumentale in the Vatican Museums, exhibited in 2015 in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and in 2023 with the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape in Bari. Comparisons were also made with holdings of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and with Moscioni’s original 1903 catalogue. Through this process, it became possible to demonstrate that the photographs – separated in the British School at Rome collections – should be viewed as a whole, allowing new interpretations of their significance.
Conclusions
The rediscovery of Moscioni’s series within the British School at Rome’s Research Collections shows how photographs can take on new meanings even long after they were first taken. These images are important both for what they depict and for their journey: produced and sold in the 1890s, circulated between scholars and institutions, preserved for decades in archival boxes, and revived through research and interpretation.
Therefore, archives are more than simple ‘storages’ of the past. Every time archival objects are rediscovered, new questions arise, inspired from current concerns. Moscioni’s photographs remind us that historical images continue to speak differently across time, based on the questions later generations bring to them. As Roland Barthes remarks in Camera Lucida, photographs open onto new meanings every time a new spectator views them, through the act of looking itself.
