Biography

Fratelli Alinari, founded in 1852 by the brothers Leopoldo, Romualdo, and Giuseppe Alinari, is the world’s oldest continuing photographic operation. Its over 140 years of experience have made it the symbol of photography’s evolution as a communications medium and as a form of documentation. Prior to the foundation of the company, art was reproduced in books through drawings and renderings which reflected the abilities of the copyist as much as those of the original artist. Only the relative few who could afford to visit the monuments in person managed to garner an explicit impression of the works themselves. The advent of photography with its precise images transformed the study of art into a more scientific discipline, accessible for the first time to great numbers of people. Housing approximately 300,000 glass-plate negatives, the Fratelli Alinari archive constitutes a formidable resource for publishers and historians interested in the history of art and of Italy’s social, economic, and political evolution. Its recent photographic campaigns have added new color transparencies of the same impeccable quality which made Alinari’s black and white prints famous throughout the world.