Researcher biography
I completed my PhD at University College London in 2012, and moved to Australia in 2015 to take up my position at UQ. I write widely on modern and contemporary art with a focus on documentary and artists' cinema. I am interested in the history of Australian photography and the role that lens-based images and visual culture have played in advancing social and environmental justice in Australia. My essays have appeared in Photography and Culture, Philosophy of Photography, Third Text, Afterall and Oxford Art Journal; I am the author of Documents of Utopia (Columbia University Press: 2015). I am keen to supervise students in all areas of Australian photography and visual culture.
Book
Magagnoli, Paolo (2015). Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Documentary. Columbia, CA, United States: Columbia University Press. doi: 10.7312/columbia/9780231172714.001.0001
Book Chapters
Magagnoli, Paolo (2021). Museums in Late Populist Democracies: the Photographic Archive and the Working Class. Museums and The Working Class. (pp. 90-107) edited by Adele Chynoweth. New York, NY United States: Routledge.
Magagnoli, Paolo (2018). ‘How Mining Made Australia’: Populist Nostalgia and the Spectre of Climate Change in the Television Documentary Dirty Business. Climate Change and The Media: Vol. 2. (pp. 120-138) edited by Benedetta Brevini and Justin Lewis. New York, NY United States: Peter Lang. doi: 10.3726/b14826
Magagnoli, Paolo (2017). Moulène, Rancière and 24 Objets de Grève: productive ambivalence or Reifying Opacity?. Work. (pp. 140-142) edited by Friederike Sigler. Cambridge, MA, United States: MIT Press.
Magagnoli, Paolo (2013). 'Let meaning disintegrate': digital compression as revelation in the art of Sean Snyder. The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet. (pp. 223-240) edited by Alexandra Moschovi, Carol McKay and Arabella Plouviez. Leuven, België: Leuven University Press.
Journal Articles
Magagnoli, Paolo (2020). “A library of photographs covering the entire continent”: Walkabout magazine and the politics of documentary in post-war Australia. Photography and Culture, 13 (1), 29-56. doi: 10.1080/17514517.2019.1693878
Magagnoli, Paolo (2020). Blinded by quarry vision: Nicholas Mangan, Australia, and the history of extraction in the South Pacific. Third Text, 34 (6), 415-435. doi: 10.1080/09528822.2020.1823703
Magagnoli, Paolo (2019). The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Burlington Contemporary
Magagnoli, Paolo (2016). The civilized artist beautifies pollution: Zhao Liang’s Water and Beijing Green. Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 3 (3), 367-377. doi: 10.1386/jcca.3.3.367_1
Magagnoli, Paolo (2016). The Internet as Ruin: Nostalgia for the Early World Wide Web in Contemporary Art. Transformations, 28
Magagnoli, Paolo (2016). 'Just Enough Critique’: the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Seismopolite (13)
Magagnoli, Paolo (2015). Mapping Artists’ Films: Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art. Senses of Cinema (74)
Magagnoli, Paolo (2013). Capitalism as Creative Destruction: The Representation of the Economic Crisis in Hito Steyerl’s In Free Fall. Third Text, 27 (6), 723-734. doi: 10.1080/09528822.2013.857899
Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). Between Mimetic Exacerbation and Abstraction: Images of Atrocities in Contemporary Art. Akademisk Kvarter, 5, 89-100.
Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). Moulène, Rancière and 24 Objets de Grève: Productive Ambivalence or Reifying Opacity?. Philosophy of Photography, 3 (1), 155-171. doi: 10.1386/pop.3.1.155_1
Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). The pull of violence: Paul Chan's trilogy of war. Afterall, 1 (31), 26-35. doi: 10.1086/668920
Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). "European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory and Politics", Ewa Mazierska. Transnational Cinemas, 3 (2), 239-241. doi: 10.1386/trac.3.2.231_5
Magagnoli, Paolo (2012). Spectres, Sven Augustijnen (2011). Belgium: Auguste Orts Production. Transnational Cinemas, 3 (1), 129-131. doi: 10.1386/trac.3.1.129_5
Magagnoli, Paolo (2011). A method in madness: historical truth in Walid Raad's Hostage: The Bachar Tapes. Third Text, 25 (3), 311-324. doi: 10.1080/09528822.2011.573316
Magagnoli, Paolo (2011). Critical nostalgia in the art of Joachim Koester. Oxford Art Journal, 34 (1), 97-121. doi: 10.1093/oxartj/kcr012
Magagnoli, Paolo (2010). Documentary fictions: new concepts of truth and representation in the works of Anri Sala and Hito Steyerl. Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture, 1 (12), 41-59.