Ruskin e la fotografia: dai connoisseurship in art ai restauratori instagramers

In 1845 John Ruskin started using the daguerrotype to reproduce the historical architecture. He decided to change his way of observing, interpreting and recording it, in order to pre- serve his memory and prevent any potential damages of the destructive restoration of his time. His initial enthusiasm for the photography faded away gradually, as he noticed that the images’ saturation caused the impoverishment and the virtualization of the direct experi- ence. By realizing that, he anticipated by centuries the risks of the indirect knowledge of re- ality, so diffused within the daily digital contexts, social networks and mass-media, that of- ten share information not carefully verified. This paper aims to analyze the impact of modern ways of transcoding ad diffusing the im- age. They are creating new impressions in connection with the digital heritage, made of im- mediate knowledge and snapshots. They are very useful to keep the story-telling always up- dated, accurate and participative, but may also be dangerous, as they may represent the idea that the artistic heritage is disconnected from the reality, from the layered memory, and can be filed away easily.