Dr Paolo Magagnoli

Senior Lecturer

School of Communication and Arts

+61 7 334 68808

p.magagnoli@uq.edu.au

Paolo is an art historian with expertise in the history of photography, artists’ cinema and video. He has written widely on modern and contemporary art and his articles have appeared in Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Afterall, Philosophy of Photography, Photography and Culture. He is the author of Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Documentary (2015). Paolo is in favour of a broader approach to image culture, one which crosses traditional boundaries between disciplines such as art history, media studies, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. His research interests are contemporary artists’ use of images for the production of history and memory, and the aesthetics and politics of documentary. He is particularly interested in supervising students in the field of photography and its interaction with fine art, film, and the mass media.

Researcher biography

I completed my MA and PhD in Art History at University College London in 2012, and moved to Australia in 2015 to take up my position at UQ. I am an art historian with expertise in the history of photography, artists' cinema and video. I have written widely on modern and contemporary art and his articles have appeared in Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Afterall, Philosophy of Photography, Photography and Culture. I am also the author of Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Documentary (2015). I am in favour of a broader approach to image culture, one which crosses traditional boundaries between disciplines such as art history, media studies, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. My research interests are contemporary artists' use of images for the production of history and memory, and the aesthetics and politics of documentary. I am interested in the history of Australian photography and the role that lens-based images and visual culture have played in advancing social and environmental justice movements in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Publications

Book (1)

Book Chapters (5)

Journal Articles (18)

Book

Magagnoli, Paolo (2015). Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Documentary. Columbia, CA, United States: Columbia University Press. doi: 10.7312/columbia/9780231172714.001.0001

Book Chapters

Magagnoli, Paolo (2023). To put a human face on the question of labour: photographic portraiture and the Australian-Pacific indentured labour trade. Coercion and wage labour: exploring work relations through history and art. (pp. 315-340) edited by Anamarija Batista, Viola Müller and Corinna Peres. London, United Kingdom: UCL Press.

Magagnoli, Paolo (2022). Museums in late populist democracies: the photographic archive and the working class. Museums and the working class. (pp. 90-107) edited by Adele Chynoweth. New York, NY United States: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003029519-6

Magagnoli, Paolo (2018). ‘How Mining Made Australia’: Populist Nostalgia and the Spectre of Climate Change in the Television Documentary Dirty Business. Climate Change and The Media: Vol. 2. (pp. 120-138) edited by Benedetta Brevini and Justin Lewis. New York, NY United States: Peter Lang. doi: 10.3726/b14826

Magagnoli, Paolo (2017). Moulène, Rancière and 24 Objets de Grève: productive ambivalence or Reifying Opacity?. Work. (pp. 140-142) edited by Friederike Sigler. Cambridge, MA, United States: MIT Press.

Magagnoli, Paolo (2013). 'Let meaning disintegrate': digital compression as revelation in the art of Sean Snyder. The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet. (pp. 223-240) edited by Alexandra Moschovi, Carol McKay and Arabella Plouviez. Leuven, België: Leuven University Press.

Journal Articles

Magagnoli, Paolo (2023). From national hero to national problem: the image of the worker in Pix Magazine (1938-1954). Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (1), 49-70. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2022.2155685

Johnston, Anna and Magagnoli, Paolo (2022). Histories of the illustrated magazine in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (1), 1-7. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2023.2156085

Magagnoli, Paolo (2020). “A library of photographs covering the entire continent”: Walkabout magazine and the politics of documentary in post-war Australia. Photography and Culture, 13 (1), 29-56. doi: 10.1080/17514517.2019.1693878

Magagnoli, Paolo (2020). Blinded by quarry vision: Nicholas Mangan, Australia, and the history of extraction in the South Pacific. Third Text, 34 (6), 415-435. doi: 10.1080/09528822.2020.1823703

Magagnoli, Paolo (2019). The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Burlington Contemporary.

Magagnoli, Paolo (2016). The civilized artist beautifies pollution: Zhao Liang’s Water and Beijing Green. Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 3 (3), 367-377. doi: 10.1386/jcca.3.3.367_1

Magagnoli, Paolo (2016). The Internet as Ruin: Nostalgia for the Early World Wide Web in Contemporary Art. Transformations, 28.

Magagnoli, Paolo (2016). 'Just Enough Critique’: the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Seismopolite (13)

Magagnoli, Paolo (2015). Mapping Artists’ Films: Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art. Senses of Cinema (74)

Magagnoli, Paolo (2013). Capitalism as Creative Destruction: The Representation of the Economic Crisis in Hito Steyerl’s In Free Fall. Third Text, 27 (6), 723-734. doi: 10.1080/09528822.2013.857899

Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). Spectres, Sven Augustijnen (2011). Belgium: Auguste Orts Production. Transnational Cinemas, 3 (1), 129-131. doi: 10.1386/trac.3.1.129_5

Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). Between Mimetic Exacerbation and Abstraction: Images of Atrocities in Contemporary Art. Akademisk Kvarter, 5, 89-100.

Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). "European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory and Politics", Ewa Mazierska. Transnational Cinemas, 3 (2), 239-241. doi: 10.1386/trac.3.2.231_5

Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). Moulène, Rancière and 24 Objets de Grève: Productive Ambivalence or Reifying Opacity?. Philosophy of Photography, 3 (1), 155-171. doi: 10.1386/pop.3.1.155_1

Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). The pull of violence: Paul Chan's trilogy of war. Afterall, 1 (31), 26-35. doi: 10.1086/668920

Magagnoli, Paolo (2011). A method in madness: historical truth in Walid Raad's Hostage: The Bachar Tapes. Third Text, 25 (3), 311-324. doi: 10.1080/09528822.2011.573316

Magagnoli, Paolo (2011). Critical nostalgia in the art of Joachim Koester. Oxford Art Journal, 34 (1), 97-121. doi: 10.1093/oxartj/kcr012

Magagnoli, Paolo (2010). Documentary fictions: new concepts of truth and representation in the works of Anri Sala and Hito Steyerl. Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, 1 (12), 41-59.

Areas of research

Art History and Curatorship