Italy is Out

Book excerpt: Italy is Out is the fruit of the collaboration between Mario Badagliacca, the established documentary photographer, and the research team of ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures’ (2014-16). This ARHC-funded project explored the implications of Italian migration in a global perspective tracing cultural transformations across borders, generations, and language. Badagliacca visited some of the project’s key locations conducting interviews with Italians or people of Italian descent before photographing them in familiar locations. The subjects of the portraits were invited to bring along three objects representing their attachment to Italy. The sheer variety of the objects which appear alongside the portraits suggest the diversity of the migrant experience. Photographs shot in London, New York, and Buenos Aires feature members of the historical Italian community, but also first generation migrants in search of opportunities not offered at home. A similar complexity emerges, more unexpectedly, in the postcolonial Italian communities of Tunis and Addis Abeba. The photographs are accompanied by essays written by members of the research team and people who have in some way participated in the project. Fiction, autobiography and academic reflection sit side by side adding to Badagliacca’s multifaceted exploration of Italians abroad.