I am an independent researcher, writer, and curator working at the intersection of photography, visual culture, and contemporary technologies of vision.
My research explores what photography is becoming as its material, technological, and biological conditions change. Moving between critical writing, archival research, feminist theory, and curatorial practice, I investigate images as material, political, and ecological processes — from their extractive histories to artificial intelligence, machine vision, and more-than-human forms of agency.
I am interested in what images conceal, consume, remember, and make possible.
Through books, research projects, lectures, and collaborations with cultural and academic institutions, I develop critical perspectives on the changing role of images in contemporary life.
My work moves between historical investigation and emerging visual cultures, opening new questions about how images are produced, circulated, interpreted, and experienced.
Sara Benaglia is a writer, researcher, and educator whose work explores photography as a material, ecological, and political process. Moving across visual culture, feminist theory, and critical and hybrid writing, she investigates the changing conditions of photographic images — from their extractive histories to their entanglements with plants, technologies, infrastructures, and more-than-human forms of agency.
She is the author of Immagini infestate. Ecologie tossiche della fotografia (Mimesis, 2026), Note ai margini della storia dell'arte (Postmedia, 2023), and, with Mauro Zanchi, the Metafotografia trilogy (Skinnerboox, 2019–21). Her writing has appeared in Il Giornale dell'Arte, Doppiozero, ATPdiary, and other publications on contemporary art and visual culture.
Her research has been presented internationally at institutions including Aalto University, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, and the Real Academia de España en Roma. She has held residencies at HANGAR in Lisbon, CCA Kitakyushu in Japan, and Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, and currently teaches at LABA Brescia.
CONTACT
saramarghe (at) gmail.com
Instagram: @sara__benaglia
Sara Benaglia translates theoretical and critical texts on image, memory, and visual culture from English into Italian.
For Postmedia Books she has translated:
— Sarah Hyndman, Why Fonts Matter (2024)
— Mieke Bal, Narratology in Practice (2024)
— Andreas Huyssen, The Art of Memory in the Contemporary World (2024)
— Andrew Dewdney, Forgetting Photography (2023)
Immagini infestate. Ecologie tossiche della fotografia (Mimesis, 2026)
SHOOT! (forthcoming)
Note ai margini della storia dell'arte (Postmedia, 2023)
The Mobility of the Matrix (Lubrina Editore, 2021)
Le insidie delle immagini (Postmedia, 2022) — with Mauro Zanchi
Metafotografia I–III (Skinnerboox, 2019–2021) — with Mauro Zanchi
Oltrerosa (Moretti & Vitali, 2018) — with Mauro Zanchi
L'Africa in Giardino (Moretti & Vitali, 2018) — with Mauro Zanchi
Casting the Circle (Fortino Editions, 2015)