Photography, Psychiatry, and Impegno. Morire di Classe (1969) Between Neorealism and Postmodernism

The Italian reform of psychiatric health care, which in 1978 brought about the closure of psychiatric hospitals, was the culmination of a process that entailed numerous initiatives to reform the asylum from within, along with public campaigns to involve the general population. This article provides a close reading of one of the most controversial contributions to these campaigns: the photobook Morire di classe. The aim of this study is threefold: first to interpret Morire di classe with reference to the political philosophy of Franco Basaglia, the foremost proponent of the reform; second, to place Morire di classe within the history of Italian visual culture, at a watershed moment marked by the neorealist phototext, the current of concerned photography in Italy, and postmodernism; third, to debunk a number of criticisms that have been recently been leveled at the photobook. This article argues that Morire di classe anticipated strategies of the later postmodern impegno, insofar as it involves its audiences in the construction of meaning rather than imparting a ‘moral lesson'.