European photography face to face with a restless identity – Reggio Emilia

Reggio Emilia – Photographing the dynamics of change trying to capture the variegated identity of an increasingly multi-ethnic community to make sense of the restlessness that crosses it.
This is the guiding theme of the 18th edition of Fotografia Europea, the international photography festival expected in Reggio Emilia from 28 April to 11 June, focused this year on the idea of ​​Europe and the peoples who inhabit it.
Promoted and produced by the Palazzo Magnani Foundation together with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia and with the contribution of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the event will be an opportunity to observe a rapidly changing world, taking a look at the roots of our individual and social identity, constantly tested.

“Europe matters: visions of a restless identity” is the track that guides the projects selected by the artistic direction of the Festival, made up of Tim Clark, Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart.

Mónica de Miranda, The Lunch on the beach (after Manet), Portugal, 2022, 350 x 230 cm, ink jet print on cotton paper © Mónica de Miranda

Once again this year the halls of the Chiostri di San Pietro will be the fulcrum of the event, which will host ten exhibitions. If Mónica De Miranda with the project The Island questions the standard notions of identity focused on the categories of race and gender, Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni share their representation of Istanbul and the profound changes affecting Turkish society examined through the eyes of marginalized communities. Simon Roberts photographs the United Kingdom by stimulating reflection on what it means to be British at a crucial moment in contemporary history, while the Italian photographer of Apulian origin Alessia Rollo reconstructs the cultural identity of southern Italy with analogue and digital manipulation techniques that reveal a evocative and spiritual universe.
Samuel Gratacap returns to Reggio Emilia with Bilateralan unpublished work dedicated to the landscape seen from both sides of the border, through the voice of those who try to cross that border, while the photographic project Odessa by Ukrainian Yelena Yemchuk weaves a visual ode to the city.

Odesa ©Yelena Yemchuk

With the French Geoffroy Mathieu the public follows the gatherers who live off the products offered by nature albeit in damaged and precarious landscapes, in the rediscovery of an alternative subsistence which sees a new way of life in the search for medicinal fruits and plants.
Sabine Weiss will instead be the protagonist of the historical exhibition of this edition. Through archival photos and numerous documents and magazines of the time, the exhibition Sabine Weiss. A life as a photographer edited by Virginie Chardin, it traces her entire career from her beginnings in 1935 to the 1980s.

Palazzo da Mosto hosts the photographic works from the project’s collection Art of the Age (partial anagram of the word “Sarajevo”) which celebrate Bosnia Herzegovina as the Guest Country of this edition of the festival.

The role of the image as a tool capable of revealing the complexities of reality and of the present time instead takes place in the Palazzo dei Musei. Here he shows it One foot in Eden. Luigi Ghirri and other gazes (from 28 April to 25 February) proposes a structured itinerary dedicated to the natural element. Gardens in Europe is a reinterpretation of the 1988 exhibition, curated by Ghirri and Giulio Bizzarri, which proposes some research on green areas and gardens conducted, as well as by Ghirri himself, by thirteen photographers who testify to a feeling of belonging towards natural spaces and the need to their profound rethinking in the context of modern cities.

Ivor Prickett, Slavica Eremic feeds her baby Nikola while her husband Nebojsa sleeps, 2006, Jurga, Croatia. Photography from the series “Returning Home – Croatia” | Courtesy and © Ivor Prickett

Palazzo dei Musei will always be the seat of Young Italian Photography #10 | Luigi Ghirri Award 2023, the project of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia that enhances seven talents of Italian photography under 35. As a demonstration of the cultural vivacity that envelops Reggio Emilia during the festival, various cultural institutions will present related projects. The Maramotti Collection joins the Festival with No Home from War: Tales of Survival and Loss, first exhibition in Italy of the English photojournalist Ivor Prickett, with over fifty shots relating to conflict scenarios from 2006 to 2022. The photojournalist Antonio Sansone, one of the most significant exponents of photojournalism of civil commitment after the Second World War, will be the protagonist at the CSAC – Centro Studi and Communication Archive of the University of Parma with the exhibition Rituals of Europe.
Once again this year the Speciale Diciottoventicinque, the European Photography training project, will accompany young photography lovers on a journey that goes from the conception to the realization of an exhibition project.
The Festival agenda will be enriched by a rich calendar of events that will involve visitors from the opening days – 28, 29, 30 April and 1 May – until 11 June.

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