Chapter 12 - Photography, Image Agency, and Visual Ecocriticism. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Lucania

During the post-war years, within the reflection on the Southern ques-  tion, Carlo Levi’s  Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945) crystallized Lucania into a   form of eternal damnation, permeated by misery and disease, as the sym-  bolic negative pole of a rigidly divided Italy where the north was instead idealized as the healthy, strong, and productive part of the country. Against this backdrop, Cartier-Bresson’s photography reveals a more open and re- ceptive perspective, free from ideological and symbolic constraints. The au- thenticity and intense vitality of the French photographer’s work still res- onates today, making it capable of signifying and acting in contemporaneity. This chapter takes its cue from the Cartier-Bresson collection held at the Rocco Scotellaro Documentation Center in Tricarico (Matera), which houses the photographs taken by the French photographer during his two reportag- es in Lucania, in 1951-1952 and in 1972-1973 respectively. Analyzing Cartier- Bresson’s work and those of other photographers who centered their works on Basilicata during those years (such as David Seymour, Arturo Zavattini, and Franco Pinna), the chapter focuses on the question of image agency (Mitchell 2005; Bredekamp 2010) in relation to the environmental issue and visual ecocriticism.