Camilla Balbi, Ph.D.

Camilla Balbi, MA

Researcher at the Department of Art of the 19th–21st Centuries and CVF – Photography Research Centre

Camilla Balbi is a PhD student in Visual and Media Studies at IULM University in Milan; she was also a Visiting Scholar at the Department of German Studies at New York University in 2020/2021. She is a co-investigator of the Matrix of Photomechanical Reproductions: Histories of Remote Access to Art. Her academic focus comprise the intersections between media practises and different artistic languages. Her main research interests include early twentieth-century German-Jewish art theory, and the history and theory of photography. Alongside these interests, she writes and works on political art and eccentric visual cultures, focusing on the particularities of the Jewish gaze as well as the female and queer gaze.
In the past, she worked as a researcher in Italy for the Israel Museum of Jerusalem, co-edited the book “Umberto Eco and the Arts” (2022) and wrote as an art critic for the international magazine Flash Art.

Main research outputs:

C. Balbi, F. Parkmann, V. Vítů, Photomechanical interventions: mobilizing feminist strategies within the PhotoMatrix Project, in F. Muzzarelli, G. Ravaioli (ed. by), Photography and Feminist Aesthetics. Italian and Transnational Perspectives, Dipartimento delle Arti, Bologna 2026, 171-184.

Camilla Balbi – Hana Buddeus, “Vernetzte bilder. Aenne Biermann und der Lette Verein in tschechischen und deutschen Zeitschriften”, Fotogeschichte, no. 181, 2026, pp. 7–17.

C. Balbi, Photomechanical Nachleben and Queer Failure: the ‘Aktfotografie’ of Krull and Fleischmann, in “German Life and Letters”, April 2026, https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.70030

C. Balbi, Dada (in Italian), in V. Trione (ed.), metafisica/metafisiche modernità e malinconia, Electa, Milan, 2026, pp. 389–393.

C. Balbi, New Objectivity (in Italian), in V. Trione (ed.), metafisica/metafisiche modernità e malinconia, Electa, Milan, 2026, pp. 525–528.

C. Balbi, Erwin Panofsky and Modernity: Painting, Photography, Film (book, in Italian), Mimesis, Milan, 2025.

C. Balbi, K. Mašterová, F. Parkman, Introduction, in “Photography and Culture”, vol. 18, no. 2, 2025, pp. 113–120.

C. Balbi, Central European Photographic Avant-Garde and the Strange Case of the Röntgenbild einer Scholle (in Italian), in “Fata Morgana”, vol. XVII, no. 54, 2025, pp. 121–139.

C. Balbi, Art History malgré tout: Rachel Wischnitzer and the Media Premises for a Jewish Art History in Berlin (1922–1933) (in Italian), in “Cultura Tedesca”, 2024, pp. 269–294.

C. Balbi, Lothar Brieger’s Das Frauengesicht der Gegenwart (1930): A Twofold Perspective on Women’s Photography in the Weimar Republic, in “PianoB”, vol. 8, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1–23.

Current projects:

The Matrix of Photomechanical Reproductions: Histories of Remote Access to Art (Lumina Quaeruntur, 2023-2027, co-investigator)

Fellow in the project Modernism’s Future Pasts: Abstraction and Identity in East-Central Europe, coordinated by Professor Megan Luke and Dr Katia Denysova (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen) and funded by the Getty Trust (Los Angeles) within the framework of the Connecting Art Histories initiative (2025–2027)