Photographing a lexicon of material life. The images of Sardinia by Max Leopold Wagner (1905-1927)

Abstract

In the history of the formation of the “inner gazes” of the contemporary Western world, the notions of allochrony and orientalism have emerged as dominant keys to interpretation. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, photography, accompanied by cinema, contributed strongly to fixing an image of traditional European societies in a contradictory key, between positivism and exotic fascination. The case of the great linguist Max Leopold Wagner, with his research in Sardinia between 1905 and 1927, supported by a systematic photographic activity, is significant for the encounter between an analytical and classificatory understanding of the images of people, objects, and landscapes of the rural island world and an explicit reference to the linguistic and lexical dimension of the culture he encountered. But within and beyond these levels emerge empathic and projective attitudes that call into question the aforementioned interpretive categories proper to the current debate in visual ethnography.