an image cannot be easily re-shot, then bracketing
ensures that out of multiple exposures, it is almost
guaranteed that one will be correct.
JENNYALLREDRedmann
Seealso:Camera: An Overview; Camera: Digital;
Digital Photography; Exposure; Film; Light Meter
Further Reading
International Center for Photography: Encyclopedia of Photography.
New York: Pound Press (Crown Publishers Inc.), 1984.
McDarrah, Gloria S., Fred W. McDarrah, and Timothy S.
McDarrah.The Photography Encyclopedia. New York:
Schirmer Books, 1999.
Pinkard, Bruce.The Photographer’s Dictionary. London
Associates: BT Badsford, 1982.ANTON GIULIO BRAGAGLIA
Italian
Among early twentieth-century photographers, per-
haps none rivaled Anton Giulio Bragaglia in the
crusade—both practical and theoretical—to distin-
guish photography as an art form. The mystical and
metaphysical predilections of Bragaglia’s imagery—
which Giovanni Lista has called ‘‘the first modern
revolution in photography’’—liberated photogra-
phy from the rigid cast of a recording machine. Brag-
aglia’s photographic innovations inspired an entire
generation of Italian artists—Wanda Wultz and
Tato, Ivo Pannaggi and Fortunato Depero among
them—to adapt the medium of photography to the
expanding contours of Futurist art and activism. On
a wider scale, his experiments and expositions antici-
pated European avant-garde approaches to photo-
graphy as a fine art in its own right, independent of
painting or the cinema.
Born in Frosinone, Italy on February 11, 1890,
Anton Giulio entered the seminary at the suggestion
of his monsignor uncle, and studied there until 1910,
developing a strong interest in literature and archae-
ology. Thereafter, he dedicated himself to photogra-
phy with the intention of becoming a journalist,
despite his father’s opposition. Along with his
brother Arturo (1893–1962), Anton Giulio began
frequenting the Cines film studios for which his
father served as the general manager and lawyer.
After buying their first camera in the Campo dei
Fiori in Rome, the brothers undertook various
kinds of photographic experimentation, using a
bedroom in their home as a makeshift studio and
darkroom. During the first years of their collabora-
tion (1911–1914), the two brothers signed their
photographs with the shared epithet ‘‘Bragaglia.’’
Anton Giulio seems to have composed and staged
the images, while Arturo served as the technical
force behind the pair. The Bragaglias appropriated
the fundaments of E.J. Marey’s chronophotographs
to their own method of ‘‘vitalist’’ expression—a
photography of movement that they would come
to termFotodinamismo.Of the two brothers, Anton
Giulio was by far the more theoretically oriented
artist, writing various theses, conducting confer-
ences, and launching manifestos on the development
ofFotodinamismo.
Late in 1912 the brothers met the Futurist ring-
leader F.T. Marinetti through the painter Giacomo
Balla, and theirFotodynamismo was baptized an
official branch of the Futurist avant-garde. As an
interdisciplinary movement seeking to integrate
new forms of art with modern life, Marinetti’s
Futurism initially embraced photography as an
eminently modern vehicle of expression. Anton
Giulio became increasingly involved in the Futurist
fold, collaborating with painters and poets on
numerous projects. The Futurist painter and musi-
cian Luigi Russolo, for example, served as Braga-
glia’s model in the now famous imageIl fumatore
(The Smoker) of 1913; sculptors and painters Balla,
Umberto Boccioni, Luciano Folgore, and Fran-
cesco Pratella would all pose for fotodinamiche
(photodynamics) as well. There also became a cer-
tain reciprocity between the Bragaglias’ photo-
graphic experiments and the early paintings of
Balla, and the mutual influences of these works are
difficult to sort out. Bragaglia’sThe Typist(1912) or
The Slap(1913), for example, share much with Bal-
la’s paintings of protracted movement, most no-BRAGAGLIA, ANTON GIULIO