Our colleagues at Kibbutzim College in Israel share with us a poster by researcher Edna Barromi-Perlman: Images of Italian Jewish Emancipation: An Analysis of Family Photographs after the Opening of Roman Ghetto in 1870
It can be accessed in full here
This study analyses photographs found in a family album of Roman Jews of portraits from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century. The album was compiled in historical times for Italy and Italian Jews– the period following the movement for the unification of Italy. For Roman Jews (Ebrei Romani) the Risorgimento and the unification of Italy in 1870 into one kingdom resulted in liberation from a life of crushing poverty, disease, and abuse under the Papal State. This period coincided with the invention and development of photographic technology. The outcome of the conflation of these two significant events– liberation and the ability to photograph and document the Jews’ changing reality– is brought forth in this study. The study explores how the end of ghetto life and emancipation influenced image construction and photographic portraiture of Ebrei Romani through an analysis of one family album.