Chapter 9 Visual Presence and Interpretation: Two Dimensions of the Fight Against Illiteracy in Texts by Carlo Levi and Photographs by David Seymour (1950)

In March 1950, David Seymour started working on an ambitious reportage on illiteracy, then a major problem in Southern Italy. On assignment for UNESCO, he visited a number of remote villages in the region of Calabria: Roggiano Gravina, Bagaladi, Saucci, San Nicola da Crissa, Cimino, and Capistrano. His journey resulted in approximately 540 pictures, many of which showed reading and writing classes for children and adults. These classes were run by local committees of the Unione nazionale per la lotta contro l’analfabetismo (National League for the Fight Against Illiteracy, UNLA), an organization created with the aim of establishing democratic political structures in Calabria by teaching peasants and their children how to read and write. In all likelihood it was Carlo Levi who first introduced David Seymour to the mentality and the hierarchical and oppressive cultural, social, and political landscape of Southern Italy. Levi and Seymour were well acquainted, and it was Seymour who advised Levi to publish some of his articles focusing on the situation in Southern Italy in the New York Times Magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s.