Researcher biography
Dr. Paolo Magagnoli is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Queensland, where he specializes in contemporary art, critical theory, and visual culture. He holds a PhD from University College London, and he was previously an Honorary Associate in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney. He writes widely on modern and contemporary art with a focus on the history of photography and artists' cinema. He is interested in the role that lens-based images and visual culture have played in advancing social and environmental justice. His essays have appeared in Photography and Culture, Philosophy of Photography, Third Text, Afterall and Oxford Art Journal; he is the author of Documents of Utopia (Columbia University Press: 2015).
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 (2023). To put a human face on the question of labour: photographic portraiture and the Australian-Pacific indentured labour trade. Coercion and wage labour: exploring work relations through history and art. (pp. 315-340) edited by Anamarija Batista, Viola Müller and Corinna Peres. London, United Kingdom: UCL Press.
Magagnoli, Paolo (2022). 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. doi: 10.4324/9781003029519-6
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 (2023). From national hero to national problem: the image of the worker in Pix Magazine (1938-1954). Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (1), 49-70. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2022.2155685
Johnston, Anna and Magagnoli, Paolo (2022). Histories of the illustrated magazine in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 47 (1), 1-7. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2023.2156085
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). The pull of violence: Paul Chan's trilogy of war. Afterall, 1 (31), 26-35. doi: 10.1086/668920
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). "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.