On Saturday 5 April 2025 at 3.00 pm in the Sala degli Affreschi of the Tadini Academy the series of conferences continues as part of the “Tadini Academy: an open museum” project financed by the Cariplo Foundation.

Sojourner Truth, born enslaved with the name Isabella Baumfree in the state of New York at the end of 1700, became, starting from 1843, a Methodist preacher whose political activity in favor of the abolition of slavery was intertwined with photographic experimentation, and found in self-portrait language a way of conveying his presence. The meeting will focus on Truth’s photographic practice, contextualizing it as a form of anti-slavery activism in the broader context of the origins of photography. Sojourner Truth’s photographic self-portraits are born with a social purpose, and as they are not produced with an expressive purpose they pose the problem of the relationship between visual and artistic, historical document and expression, museum conservation, cultural valorization and the need for memory, bringing out relativity and the implications of the status of artistry relating to visual objects.

Eleonora Quadri specializes in contemporary art history and photography. She graduated in 2011 with a thesis on the work of Sophie Calle and attended the Photography Foundation Master’s Degree in Modena from 2012 to 2014, where she held a theoretical course as a teacher until 2022. He collaborates with the photographic archive of the Isrec Institute in Bergamo and teaches art history at the Decio Celeri high school in Lovere. He has participated in research residencies and exhibitions at several institutions, including: Izolatsia in Kiev; Fabbri Foundation in Pieve di Soligo; Murate Art District in Florence, the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin, MATA in Modena, Palazzo Lucarini in Trevi, Fondazione Carlo Gajani, the Stills gallery in Edinburgh.

Text credits: Accademia Tadini
Cover image credits: G. Bonomelli