The FUORI! photo archive rediscovered by an IMT student

Lucca, 15 January 2025 – The Angelo Pezzana Foundation - FUORI! is among the winners of the public call for proposals "Strategia Fotografia 2025", promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. Thanks to the contribution obtained for Section IV of Area 2 "Promotion of photography in Italy and abroad", Emanuele Carlenzi, a student in the doctoral programme in Cultural Systems at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, will curate the publication of a volume dedicated to the rediscovery of the Photographic Archive of the Angelo Pezzana Foundation - FUORI!.

Entitled "FUORI Fuoco! Manifestazioni, luoghi, persone", the book offers a visual narrative of the history of FUORI!, the first homosexual liberation movement in Italy – through a selection of images dating from the period between 1971 and 1982.

“The catalogue, which will be published by Edizioni ETS, fills a historiographical gap, restoring a previously unknown heritage to the collective memory,” explains Carlenzi. “Structured in three chapters – Events, Places, People – the book reflects the organisation of the original archive, intended not only as a space for conservation, but also as an active place of political resistance.”

The critical contributions in the volume will offer an interdisciplinary reading of the material, interweaving the photographs with historical, art-historical, gender and activism studies. The title refers to the recovery of stories that have remained marginalized, bringing them back into focus in public discourse and in the visual memory of LGBTQIA+ rights and movements in Italy.

The Angelo Pezzana Foundation - FUORI!

The Angelo Pezzana Foundation - FUORI! was founded in 1980 on the initiative of Angelo Pezzana and other  activists with the aim of preserving and promoting the historical memory of the movement. Its archive, originating from FUORI! materials (photographs, magazines, books, documents, posters, press) collected since 1971 and has expanded with donations from activists, scholars and artists over the following decades.

For the first time, thanks to the research and study conducted by Emanuele Carlenzi, the photographic archive will undergo systematic reorganisation, classification and digitisation. This work will not only make a vast collection of photographs that has long remained hidden accessible, but will also allow for the recovery and reconstruction of an important system of attributions. It will therefore be a decisive contribution not only to the history of the homosexual movement, but also to the history of Italian photography and to the understanding of its relationship with the political and social context of the country between the 1970s and 1980s.

The curator of the volume: Emanuele Carlenzi

A photography historian, PhD student at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and fellow at the IMT School's LYNX Research Unit, he currently works on ARTEMIS, a research project co-funded by the Tuscany Region as part of the GiovaniSì call for proposals and by the documentary network of the Province of Lucca, which is working to reconstruct the careers of women in art and craftsmanship in the province of Lucca. Her research also includes the study and reorganisation of the archive of the artist Fiore de Henriquez, preserved in the village of Peralta (Camaiore, Lucca). Carlenzi's work focuses in particular on photographic exhibitions at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and the intersections between images, LGBTQIA+ subjectivity and archival practices. She has presented her studies at international venues (Musée d'Orsay, INHA, University of Bristol, Birkbeck University of London, Scuola Normale Superiore). He is an active member of the queer caucus of the American Association of Italian Studies and a research assistant in the PRIN research projects "Historicising AIDS: Policies, rights, discourses, and memories in the Italian case" (PI: Ilaria Pavan, Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca) and "Fotografiste: Women in Photography from Italian Archives (1839-1939)" (PI: Linda Bertelli, Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca). For the volume "FUORI Fuoco! "Carlenzi will curate the critical and iconographic structure, ensuring consistency between texts and images, thematic organisation, selection

The project is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2025, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.