David Seymour’s Album on the Fight against Illiteracy in Calabria as a Tool of Mediatization: Material Traces of Editing and Visual Storytelling

Abstract

The digitization of the UNESCO Archives has brought to light a hitherto unknown photography album (containing contact sheets, comments, and captions) on the social, economic, political, and cultural context of illiteracy in Italy, which was made for UNESCO in 1950 by Magnum co-founder David Seymour.1 Seymour at the time was also famous for his photography essays on the Spanish Civil War and his reportages on children in Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War.2