Abstract

The author aims to define Italian conceptual photography through what can be called the «ironic turn» that characterised conceptual art. With the dematerialization of the artwork, the priority of the idea and a mocking behaviour assumed both by the artists and the audience involved in the artistic processes, photography was used so as to record a proof of the idea in the making, but it was also a tool of execution and reflection. By analysing the work of Italian photographers at that time - Vaccari, Ghirri, Mulas and others - and their fields of action (techniques, performances, but also theoretical production), it is notable that Italian conceptual photography was the result of an interchange with the international conceptual art and that the «ironic» continuity was very productive above all with the American art context.