Luciano Morpurgo

Luciano Morpurgo (born February 20, 1886 in Split , Austria-Hungary , † September 21, 1971 in Rome ) was an Italian photographer and writer.

Life

Morpurgo came from a Jewish family that derived its name from Marburg an der Drau (now Maribor ). At the age of ten he already owned a considerable collection of postcards with Dalmatian motifs. The Morpurgo of Split (then Spalato) were an entrepreneurial family and, like their friends and related family Stock in Trieste in Split, owned a liqueur factory, the Morpurgo Distillery . Vito Morpurgo - an uncle of Luciano - had owned a bookshop on the town's main square since 1856, which also served as an intellectual center.

Luciano Morpurgo attended the Liceo Foscarini in Venice , whose Konvikt was often visited by the sons of the Italianized Dalmatian upper class, and studied at the University of Padua .

When Italy entered the war in 1915, Morpurgo secretly left Split, which was then part of the Danube Monarchy, and moved to Rome, where he established himself as a professional photographer and photo reporter. In 1919 he founded the Società Tipografica Grafia SEDA - Sezione Edizioni d 'Arte, renamed IFI - Istituto Fotografico Italiano in 1924 . In 1925 he founded the travel and art book publisher Casa Editrice Luciano Morpurgo .

In the 1920s and 1930s Morpurgo published numerous reports on European and non-European countries, including in 1927 on Palestine . Due to a petition to Benito Mussolini , Morpurgo was exempted from the full application of the racial laws introduced according to the German model and was allowed to continue publishing. His childhood memory Quando ero fanciullo ("When I was a child"), which was already successful in 1938 and reissued in 1942 under the pseudonym Luciano Spalatino, was followed in 1946 by another autobiographical book Caccia all'uomo ( manhunt ) which also describes the tragic fate of the Jews in Italy and Dalmatia reflected.

Morpurgo is now considered one of the most important Italian photographers of the 20th century. About 60,000 of his negatives were purchased by the Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale. In 1989 Morpurgo's heirs handed over 950 vintage prints to the Museo Nazionale Alinari della Fotografia .

Literary works

• Quando ero fanciullo. Libro per tutti i bambini dai dieci ai settant'anni , Editore Luciano Morpurgo, Roma 1938
• Caccia all'uomo. Vita sofferenze e beffe. Pagine di diario 1938-1944 , Casa Editrice Dalmatia SA di Luciano Morpurgo, Rome 1946

literature

• Palestina 1927 nelle fotografie di Luciano Morpurgo , edited by Gabriele Borghini, Simonetta Della Seta, Daniela Di Castro, U.Bozzi Editore, Roma 2001 ISBN 88-7003-034-2
• Maura Zacchi, Luciano Morpurgo. Report alla Cirio , in AFT. Rivista di Storia e Fotografia , Numero 44, 2006, pp. 45-56

Web links

• To the Morpurgo family