Il divismo e la fotografia : Cléo de Mérode, la prima fashion icon

This essay focuses on the contribution that early photography had in planning one of the most characteristic phenomena of contemporary visual and popular culture: the rise of the star. Thanks to photography, stardom has become a true global, democratic and popular experience, attracted by the sublimated possession of bodies, but also by their fanatic adoration and devotion. In particular, the role of the French dancer Cléo de Mérode (18751966), as the first mass icon of the contemporaneity in the photographic era, will be explored. [Publisher's text].