Looking at the Images

Neorealism offered a harsh representation of reality in its portrayal of war brutality, shantytowns, an impoverished population, and abandoned children. This depiction relied on photographic reproduction. However, besides this rendition, neorealism consisted of other multifaceted forms that defined its visual culture. Film posters promoted neorealist productions through a pictorial style and the eroticisation of the actors’ bodies,instead of displaying photographic images of everyday reality, as in photojournalism. Neorealism emerged at the same time as photo-romances, which were popular magazines offering melodramatic narratives in pictures. Neorealist works were novelised according to this template, which contributed to defining neorealist visual culture. In the 1950s, as neorealism declined, attempts were made to merge documentary representation with the template provided by photo-romances and the burgeoning field of photo- journalism. Photo-documentaries published in Cinema Nuovo expanded and prolonged neorealist visual culture into photography.