Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) is one of the twelve certified public universities in Switzerland and member of swissuniversities. It is organised in six Faculties and is active in several study and research areas, among which: architecture, communication sciences, computational science, data science, economics, health studies, humanities, informatics, law, medicine and biomedicine. Established in 1996, USI is in constant evolution, always taking on new challenges while remaining true to its three guiding principles: quality, openness and responsibility.
The collaboration with PHOTOCONSORTIUM started with the intention of supporting the diffusion of culture and archive materials, so as to allow free access to scholars and interested people.
USI’s website: https://www.usi.ch/en
Areas of collaboration agreed between USI and PHOTOCONSORTIUM include the creation of the “Collection Guido Gozzano – Illustrated Works in Periodicals (1905-1916)”.
The collection dedicated to Italian poet and writer Guido Gozzano (1883-1916) displays the author’s illustrated works as they appeared in their first publication in periodicals. Between 1903 and 1916 Gozzano published, in thirty-five different journals, more than two hundred texts, including poems, travel reports, fairy tales, miscellaneous prose and reviews, few of which find publication in volume during the author’s lifetime. Among those, seventy-two texts (33% of the total) are accompanied by images – photographs and illustrations – which are not found in later editions. The loss of this interplay affects not only images, but involves the meaning of Gozzano’s texts, which in the first publication was constructed in iconotextual interaction. The digital archive makes it possible to consult Gozzano’s illustrated periodical publications, which are increasingly difficult to find and are often the only existing witness to the original iconotestual link, allowing scholars and the interested public to have access to the original intermediate configuration of the works.
