Bruno Munari, Dominique Darbois, Tana Hoban: three paradigmatic examples of the use of photography in children's books

Abstract

The existing academic literature on the children's photobook is very scarce compared to that produced in the last twenty years on the photobook as a visual work for an adult audience and it is particularly lacking in studies that adopt an aesthetic-artistic perspective. The existing studies, mainly produced in the French area, consider the children's photobook from the perspective of pedagogical theories or children's literature. This article proposes to remedy, in part, these shortcomings and to return the analysis of the examined works considered to the disciplinary sphere of visual and artistic studies, concentrating on the work of three artists, Bruno Munari, Dominique Darbois and Tana Hoban, who can be considered indispensable for a study of the different possibilities of photography in the book as a visual work for children. On one hand, because their dedication to childhood was not episodic, but it privileged, in effect they dedicated a substantial part of their creative commitment to it and to the medium of the book; on the other hand, because the different solutions and functions with which photography is employed in their works have become an important point of reference for subsequent experiences concerning the encounter between photography and children's books.