Learning Tuscany: In Plato's Cave

In Plato’s Cave presents photographs made by UT students during the six-week Learning Tuscany summer study abroad program. Informed by an intensive art history curriculum, these students created photographs as a means to visually investigate the role of pilgrimage in contemporary Italy. The concept of pilgrimage has been central to photography since the medium's invention. With the advancement of technology and the democratization of travel, people all over the world were traveling to society's most cherished monuments to not only see them for themselves but to photograph them and share them—to use photographic representation to transform that place into a commodity. Instead of simply reproducing the same images we’ve all seen countless times, students used photography to interrogate how today's global world thinks about and interacts with historical western spaces.

Organized by Eli Durst, faculty, Studio Art.