Several years ago, a certain number of very old photographs were found by chance at the Modern and Contemporary History Library in Rome. After a series of searches, it was discovered that they were images taken by the Milanese painter-photographer Stefano Lecchi during the summer of 1849. At that time he was in Rome and made a series of photographs in the places where - shortly before - Garibaldi and other patriots from all over Italy had defended the Roman Republic from the French army sent by Napoleon III to restore papal power.
Stefano Lecchi, without knowing it, had made the first war report, making use of the possibilities of his era. Photography had just been born, the equipment was difficult to maneuver: bulky and static. An operational situation that did not allow – like today – to fix the events (the battles) at the very moment of their occurrence, so Lecchi concentrated on the places where the clashes had previously occurred, thus trying to organize a post- story of the battle through the images of him.
Reproducibility techniques were also in their infancy. After the initial phase of the "daguerreotype", the problem was that this new revolutionary technique allowed, yes, to obtain a unique, non-reproducible image. The photographic artisans of the time immediately began to experiment with new techniques in an attempt to achieve reproducibility. And among these pioneers there was also Stefano Lecchi who shortly thereafter began to use another technique known as the "calotype" which allowed the reproduction of multiple positive copies starting from a single negative image.
About a century and a half later, as already mentioned, the work of Stefano Lecchi was found in the Library of modern and contemporary history: 41 photographs (in the form of "iodine bromide salted papers" according to the formula for the " calotype" developed by the photographer) which together with other images, also by Lecchi, rediscovered instead at the Getty Research Institute, have become the basis for a digital exhibition project “Rome 1849: Stefano Lecchi, the first war reportage”, inaugurated last December 12th.
The online platform used is that of MOVIO, a "kit" for the creation of virtual exhibitions created by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities with the aim of enhancing above all lesser-known cultural assets or even, for a whole series of circumstances, hitherto remained “invisible”. The digital exhibition(www.movio.beniculturali.it/bsmc/stefanolecchi/it/62/mostra-digitale), under the heading "file", allows you to view all the images taken by Lecchi during that summer of war in Rome in 1849. Each image corresponds to a file with technical information on photography, an accurate description of the reproduced subject and bibliographic citations always refer to the subject.
In the philological commitment that has made possible the re-discovery of images and their valorisation and diffusion, a special mention goes to the result obtained thanks to the digitization work. The accurate scanning of the "salted papers" has allowed an important result: the discovery of "new stories" in the individual images through the emergence - through digital details - of characteristics that were previously "hidden" or difficult to read. Thus architectural elements appeared that were not legible to the naked eye in the background, objects confused in the landscape such as the carriage of a cannon actually present in a photograph of Villa Savorelli, or various human figures which in the original reproduction were almost invisible like the young dressed with sophistication in the image "Battery on the Aurelian walls". Very interesting then the emergence of a writing on the wall of the image "Antica Osteria Cucina", where, thanks to the digital copy, article 5 of the Preamble of the French Constitution of 1848 becomes legible again.
