Steps off the Beaten Path: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Rome and its Environs

At the end of the nineteenth century as Rome was on its way to becoming a modern city and the capital of a unified Italy, a group of photographers began aiming their lenses at the streets, recording everyday scenes alongside the ancient ruins and Baroque churches of the eternal city. Their innovations foreshadowed what would later be called “street photography.” This exhibition gathers works by Vincenzo Carlo Domenico Baldassarre Simelli, Gustave Eugène Chauffourier, A. De Bonis, and Edmond Lebel, little known today but among the most accomplished Italian photographers of the time. The fleeting images they recorded convey a sense of intimacy and innocence capturing the charm of Roman byways, in contrast to the more conventional views of their peers. Many of the scenes they documented were subsequently swept away by modern development.