Cover not available
Part of
Photography in Children's Literature
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 17] 2023
► pp. 144–167

Chapter 6
“A successful photograph is worth as much as a story”

Photography’s influence on Bruno Munari’s books

Bruno Munari was an Italian artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who combined art and design to great effect in his visual art and books. During his long, interdisciplinary career, Munari experimented with many artistic possibilities: painting, illustration, sculpture, design, graphics, teaching, poetry, and writing. He also cultivated a peculiar relationship with photography. This chapter investigates photography’s influence on Munari’s poetics, from Futurism and other Avant-garde movements to the Bauhaus and László Moholy-Nagy’s work, graphic design experimentation, and collaborations with photographers. His multifaceted approach can be investigated through two editorial project typologies: photocollage and photographic picturebooks. What is discussed is how historic, artistic, and cultural photography influenced his children’s works and to what extent photographic experimentation affected Munari’s creativity and aesthetics in his original books.
Article outline
  • Munari’s photographic investigations: Historic, artistic, and cultural connections
    • Impact of Futurism and other avant-garde movements
    • The Impact of the Bauhaus and László Moholy-Nagy’s work
    • Impact of graphic-design experimentation
    • Impact of experimentation with light and projections
    • Impact of collaborations with photographers
  • Photography in Munari’s picturebooks
    • Picturebooks with photocollage
    • Le macchine di Munari
    • Cappuccetto Giallo
  • Photographic picturebooks
    • Da lontano era un’isola
    • Ciccì Coccò
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.17.06cam
References (50)
References
Primary sources
Arnone, Enzo & Munari, Bruno. 1982. Ciccì Coccò. Veniano: FotoSelex.Google Scholar
. 2000. Ciccì Coccò. Mantova: Corraini.Google Scholar
Carpin Pinin (ed). 1980. Il libro della fantasia. Torino: UTET.Google Scholar
De Biasi, Mario. 1972. Mamme favole e bambini. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
. 1977. L’orto delle bambole. Matera: Meta.Google Scholar
. 1988. Il romanzo del legno. Udine: Magnus.Google Scholar
Munari, Bruno. 1942. Le macchine di Munari. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
. 1944. Fotocronache di Munari. Dall’isola dei tartufi al qui pro quo. Milano: Gruppo Editoriale Domus.Google Scholar
. 1956. Nella notte buia. Milano: Muggiani.Google Scholar
. 1971. Da lontano era un’isola. Milano: Emme Edizioni.Google Scholar
. 1972. Cappuccetto Giallo. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
. 1973. Un fiore con amore. Milano: Emme Edizioni.Google Scholar
. 1980. I Prelibri. Milano: Danese.Google Scholar
Munari, Bruno & De Biasi, Mario. 1986. Direzione sorpresa. Milano: Cordani Editore.Google Scholar
Rodari, Gianni & Munari, Bruno. 1962. Favole al telefono. Torino: Giulio Einaudi.Google Scholar
Secondary sources
Antonello, Pierpaolo. 2009. Beyond Futurism: Bruno Munari’s Useless Machines. In Futurism and Technological Imagination, Günter Berghaus (ed), 313–334. Amsterdam: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barberis, Alfredo. 1978. Voci che contano. Milano: Edizioni il Formichiere.Google Scholar
Branzi, Andrea. 1984. Il gioco di fare. Intervista a Bruno Munari. Modo 8.71/72: 40–43.Google Scholar
Campagnaro, Marnie. 2017. Bruno Munari’s Visual Mapping of the City of Milan: An Historical Analysis of the Picturebook Nella nebbia di Milano. In Maps and Mapping in Children’s Literature: Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes, Nina Goga & Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (eds), 147–163. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Materiality in Bruno Munari’s Book Objects: The case of Nella notte buia and I Prelibri.  Libri & Liberi 8.2: 359–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “Libri per liberare i bambini dalla banalità. Ullallà”. Riflessioni intorno alla collana “Tantibambini” (1972–1978). In Autorità in crisi. Scuola, famiglia, società prima e dopo il ’68, Tiziana Pironi (ed), 227–234. Roma: Aracne.Google Scholar
. 2022. Interview with Enzo Arnone (13 August 2022).Google Scholar
Caramel, Luciano, Mulas, Ugo & Munari, Bruno (eds). 1970. Campo urbano. Interventi estetici nella dimensione collettiva urbana. Como 21 settembre 1969. Como: Editrice Cesare Nani.Google Scholar
Colizzi, Alessandro. 2011. Bruno Munari and the invention of modern graphic design in Italy, 1928–1945. PhD dissertation, University of Leiden.
Druker, Elina. 2018. Collage and montage in picturebooks. In The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed), 49–58. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Golan, Romy. 2017. Campo Urbano: Episodes from an Unwritten History of Participation. In Bruno Munari: The Lightness of Art, Pierpaolo Antonello, Matilde Nardelli & Margherita Zanoletti (eds), 327-358. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Falcinelli, Riccardo (ed). 2022. Filosofia del graphic design. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Lista, Giovanni. 1979. Futurismo e fotografia. Milano: Edizioni Multhipla.Google Scholar
. 1981. Futurist Photography. Art Journal 41.4: 358–364. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed). 1985. I futuristi e la fotografia. Creazione fotografica e immagine quotidiana. Modena: Edizioni Panini.Google Scholar
Maffei, Giorgio. 2008. Munari i libri. Mantova: Corraini.Google Scholar
Meneguzzo, Marco. 1993. Bruno Munari. Roma: Laterza.Google Scholar
Moholy-Nagy, László. 1925. Malerei Fotografie Film – Bauhaus Bücher 8. München: Albert Langen Verlag.Google Scholar
Munari, Bruno. 1937. Che cosa sono i fotogrammi e come si fanno. La Lettura 4: 352–354.Google Scholar
. 1966. Arte come mestiere. Roma: Editori Laterza.Google Scholar
. 1968. Design e comunicazione visiva. Roma: Editori Laterza.Google Scholar
. 1972. Xerografia. Documentazione all’uso creativo delle macchine Rank Xerox. Without Place: Rank Xerox.Google Scholar
. 1977. Fantasia. Roma: Laterza.Google Scholar
(ed). 1977. Xerografie originali. Un esempio di sperimentazione sistematica strumentale. Bologna: Zanichelli.Google Scholar
. 1990. Illustrare un testo. LiBeR 6: 24–25.Google Scholar
Pelizzari, Maria Antonella. 2015. Variazioni impreviste: Bruno Munari e la fotografia. In Bruno Munari Politecnico. Fare dell’arte con qualunque mezzo, Giovanni Rubino & Marco Sanmicheli (eds), 41–50. Busto Arsizio: Nomos.Google Scholar
. 2017. The Charade of Bruno Munari’s Photo-reportage (1944). In Bruno Munari: The Lightness of Art, Pierpaolo Antonello, Matilde Nardelli & Margherita Zanoletti (eds), 133–191. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Quintavalle, Arturo Carlo (ed). 1979. Bruno Munari. CSAC Università di Parma, quaderno N. 45. Milano: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Schibeci, Stefania. 2018. La trasformazione del medium fotografico nei primi anni del Novecento: dai Fotogrammen di Moholy-Nagy ai fotogrammi di Franco Grignani, Luigi Veronesi e Bruno Munari. In Fotografia e culture visuali del XXI secolo, Enrico Menduni & Lorenzo Marco (eds), 159–168. Roma: RomaTre Press.Google Scholar
Stevanin, Federica. 2017. Fantasia e fotografia: Bruno Munari davanti l’obiettivo fotografico. In Bruno Munari: aria | terra, Guido Bartorelli (eds), 191–200. Mantova: Corraini.Google Scholar
Tappari, Massimiliano. 2019. Ciccì Coccò da tenere sul comò. Incontro con Enzo Arnone. Andersen 366: 18–21.Google Scholar
Wattenberg, Jane. 2018. Picturebooks and photography. In The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed), 302–314. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zaffarano, Luca. 2012. The Maximum with the Minimum. In Bruno Munari: My Futurist Past, Miroslava Hájek & Luca Zaffarano (eds), 149–163. Cinisello Balsamo (MI): Silvana Editoriale.Google Scholar
Zannier, Italo. 2001. Bruno Munari: Fotocronache e fotomontaggi. Fotologia, 21/22: 11–13.Google Scholar
Zanoletti, Margherita. 2017. Word Imagery and Images of Words: Bruno Munari the Writer. In Bruno Munari: The Lightness of Art, Pierpaolo Antonello, Matilde Nardelli & Margherita Zanoletti (eds), 193–225. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar