Obiettivo seta | Reframing Silk
La spedizione del 1859 in Cina nelle fotografie di Giacomo Caneva | Giacomo Caneva’s Photographs of the 1859 Expedition to China
open access | peer reviewed
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edited by
- Giulia Pra Floriani - Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia - email
- Marta Boscolo Marchi - Direttrice Museo d'Arte Orientale di Venezia, Italia - email
Abstract
In an effort to revive a European silk industry devastated by the spread of the silkworm disease pébrine, in 1859 the noblemen Giovan Battista Castellani and Gherardo Freschi proposed an expedition to India and China to acquire healthy silkworms. The photographer Giacomo Caneva joined the expedition, producing images that permit today’s reader to observe, as if the distance of time and space was nullified, the snuff bottle of a Shanghai Qing official, the lotus shoes of Huzhou’s noblewomen, or a stone-carved monumental gate. In our contemporary society, characterized as it is by the near total ubiquity of digital images, this exhibition presents photographs not only as visual stimuli but also as unique, unrepeatable objects defined by specific techniques, materialities, and colours, as well as the traces of their turbulent lives.
Keywords Silk production in Europe • Roman School of Photography • Photography in Asia • Travel photography • Castellani-Freschi expedition • Giacomo Caneva • Silk production in Zhejiang • Pébrine • Photography in China
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/979-12-5742-011-6 | e-ISBN 979-12-5742-011-6 | ISBN (PRINT) 979-12-5742-012-3 | Published Feb. 2, 2026 | Language it
Copyright © 2026 Giulia Pra Floriani, Marta Boscolo Marchi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.