Thesis outline draft

Themes: private vs public histories, fact vs fiction, memory and surrogates, memory's afterlife.

Intro
Background: The recent acquisition on my part of a photographic album from the Italo-Ethiopian war (1935-36) that belonged to my grandfather prompted a reflection on the role that the album exercised on its surroundings over time, on its theatricality and its functions in the construction of a space where fact and fiction, private and public intertwined.
Statement: The text is an attempt — I believe one of the many achievable — at deconstructing a photographic war album from the mid-1930s that has been in the possession of my family for three generations. The attempt uses the album's internal narrative architecture as its dominant point of reflection. Nobody in the family tried to question the object before, to understand its contents, in accord with tendencies in post-war Italian society that preferred to ignore or forget controversial items from a certain historical period instead of giving them the means to tell their story. As a result, the album became a specter that subtly influenced its surroundings, without however it ever being challenged. As somebody who has lived inside its sphere of influence without knowing much about it, for me the album shares both the qualities of family heirloom and of found object, and it is thus ambivalent.
Objects are never fully innocent or neutral. Visual objects as photographic albums in particular are deliberate creations, products not only of individuals but also of cultural and social environments. By deconstructing one of such objects by following its points of interest I intend to get closer to its legacy and to propose a reading of the events it depicts.

Body
Pt. I - On the background of the album. Overview on the album and its author and, by extension, on the relation the album entertained with its surroundings.

General details on the object. May include technical details describing the object (type of album, size, material, etc.).
Brief biographical notes on the author of the album, both before and after the Ethiopian campaign. For instance: who was he and what kind of background did he have? How did he become involved in a colonial war? Did the war affect his life afterwards? How did he integrate his experience with his family life?

References to the historical and social conditions that made the album possible and (may have) influenced its making. Can include references to:

The creation of national identity: from the post-Adwa revanchism to the resurgence of Imperial Roman myths.
The "New Man” of Fascism through aesthetics of action and violence.
Miscellaneous influences from media outlets: newsreels, popular novels and music, films, etc.

Pt. II - On the album’s structure as evidence of the creation of its own (mythical?) space.
The analysis of the album’s overall arrangement and of very deliberate "editing" choices reveal it as the result of an act of creative visual storytelling aimed at the construction of an environment with strongly delineated characters. In a way not dissimilar to films, editing is aimed at the construction of a defined illusion. This is evidenced by:

Subjective hierarchy of known events.
Forays in and out of chronological order.
Blanks and omissions.
Presence of iterations.

Closer analysis of themes from excerpted photographs and groups of photographs hints at complex relations between factual and fictional, spontaneous and idealized. Through grouping and ungrouping of photographs regardless of their actual chronological order (see previous point), the album brings forth a retelling of facts that has the appearance of reality, but is, in fact, fictitious. Possible themes to explore:

Landscape and wilderness.
Portraits and self-portraits: European and local types, through role play, body language, etc.
African beauties: the trope of the exotic woman, also in connection with madamato and relations photographer/photographed.
"Our" dead vs "their" dead: differences in representing death from both sides of the conflict.

Pt. III - On the fossilization of the album’s space and on adoption of strategies for understanding its function.
Examination of the object’s aura and its disruption: how disturbing the album’s layout raises questions that redefine its meaning and power. Points of interest:

Impressions, interactions, memories related to the album from those who were in contact with it. What did the album represent for them? How did they look at it, listen to its story? Did they pose any question to it?
How did the album, an object made of collected photographic images, come to acquire its aura? What is its aura made of? How is the aura felt and how can it be disturbed?
What did deconstructing the object change in my perception of it? What did I gain and lose in the process?

On how re-imagining the album in a completely different format, for instance by isolating and reworking visual themes contained in it, can work as a form of critical reflection on its role (relation with own previous practice and with final project).

Conclusion
Objects can serve as imaginary spaces where individuals project their personal expectations and desires. When objects are immersed in social contexts however—such as families, as in the album’s case—the projection ceases to be a "personal affair". Time and habit gradually magnify their influence and this invests them of an authority that renders them untouchable and, as such, totemic. The creative work my grandfather put in the album of photographs he took during the Italo-Ethiopian war, his structuring of content to match personal narrative needs, reinforces the idea that, far from being a simple commonplace object, the album is in fact a space where specific historical events were reconstructed, interpreted and preserved. As a consequence, the album became with time the embodiment of an established order that would and could not be discussed.
The close examination of the album, its disruption and its possible re-imagining, are therefore intended as strategies that open up a way for this established order to be revised, discussed and, at least in part, dismantled.