Image, phenomenology and photography in Calvino

The article analyzes the role of the image in Italo Calvino's writing and in particular how the image represents a distance for the author, or a point of view outside the intentionality of the thinking of the knowing subject. The first part of the essay examines several texts in which Calvino thinks of distance in terms of solitude, time, novelty and silence. The essay then looks at the epistemological potential that Calvino recognizes in the photographic image and photography as a technique through the analysis of the story The adventure of a photographer (from Gli amori difficile), the book The day of a scrutineer and the article "In memory of Roland Barthes" published in La Repubblica on the occasion of the philosopher's death. What emerges from this essay is a true phenomenology of the visible that Calvino develops through imaginary characters and his own reflections that bring him closer to philosophers such as Barthes and Walter Benjamin and anticipate areas of contemporary critical theory such as, for example, affect theory ("affect theory").