Visions of the Empire. The ruins of Roman past in Fascist Lybia

Since the 1920s, the Fascist regime promoted a significant visual use of Libyan archeological ruins, which were photographed and published by newspapers, periodicals and academic journals in Italy and overseas. The visualisation of antiquities had a clear political purpose: to strengthen the fascist historic imagery while celebrating the myth of romanità and the ideal connection existing between the metropole and the colony. At the same time, it was meant to emphasise the theme of modernity, showing the intimate relation of science and technology with the preservation of the ancient world. Starting from the role that the regime assigned to Libyan antiquities, the present article focuses on such relation and examines the use of a specific means of communication: archeological photography. Divested of its scientific value, archeological photography was not used simply to document the excavation activities, but rather to legitimise the superiority of Italian science, which could bring Rome’s past back to life in territories that had now been reconquered. In this sense, the visualisation of historical evidence further legitimised Italian domination over the colony, providing the fascist colonial archive with new themes.