Abstract

Photographic images have to be considered both a heritage of much diverse archivability and cultural relevance, and a media whose deployment allows plentiful observations, bringing different sorts and levels of students, viewers and publics to a deeper understanding of what visual communication might mean today. Within the globalized world, image access and understanding is a decisive topic for the expansion of a shared culture of critical and historical awareness. The many resources developed within the ICTs have updated our operability of photographic images in both senses. Beyond their stabilized value as artworks or documents, illustrations or commodity, photographic images – in their new, lighter, more viable digital form – can still provide unending stimuli according to their reframing within educational contexts such as museums, virtual collections, websites, universities and professional schools. Images can be seen as moving representations of objects and of themselves; they can provide information and comparative grounds both concerning their own language and/or the objects they depict. Through digitalized photographic images, and their purposeful handling, cultural values might be installed, connected and shared, while actual experiences might be strongly encouraged or suitably substituted, according to the level of definition and extensiveness of the imaging process. In a mind-enticing manner – and on the grounds of actual educational practices – the paper will briefly consider a few examples of good practice and present the range of possibilities offered nowadays by photographic images in the framework of an updated notion of museum that meets the requirements of inclusion, access and development.