Brescia photo festival
Until September 30th
Brescia
Color by Franco Fontana, Legacy. Matter-history-identity by Gabriele Micalizzi e Brescia, Piazza della Loggia 1974 by Maurizio Galimberti are some of the exhibitions on display in the seventh edition of the festival. The theme chosen is “Witnesses”, to underline, as the organizers write, “the ability of photographers to document the present by encouraging the reading of history through the story told by the images”.
Italian photography festival
Until October 6th
Bibbiena, Poppi and Pratovecchio Stia (Arezzo)
The title of this first edition is From Earth to the Moon. Explorations on Italian photography. The program includes a book fair dedicated to photographic publishing, as well as meetings, portfolio readings and numerous exhibitions. Between them, Italian photography. Maps, routes and languages collects the work of one hundred authors from the national scene, from the post-war period to today. The exhibition displays, among others, photos by Mario Cresci, Paola Agosti, Gabriele Basilico, Letizia Battaglia and Paolo Pellegrin.
Gu.Pho. International vernacular PhotoFestival
From June 20th to 23rd
Guiglia Castle (Modena)
This is the third edition of the international festival of vernacular photography, of images taken by ordinary people in everyday life situations or for private use. Gu.Pho “does not assign a theme, topic or guideline to follow,” the organizers write. Based on the guests’ proposals, however, the investigation that the festival suggests revolves around the idea of the forgery, with the aim of understanding what photography really is, between truth, document and proof. Gu.Pho will be inaugurated with the screening of the film Family photo, by Japanese director Ryôta Nakano. Thirteen exhibitions and five meetings are scheduled, including: The fury of images by the Spanish photographer and popularizer Joan Fontcuberta; There are no private photographs by Michele Smargiassi, journalist of La Repubblica; Incomplete encyclopedia of touch curated by Erik Kessels, Dutch artist, designer and curator, who will close the festival with his meeting.
Feminist demonstration in front of the Rome court, 1977.
(Paola Agosti, Italian Photography Festival)
Phase. Southeast Visual Arts Festival
From June 21st to August 31st
Otranto (Lecce)
“Recognize in images, whether printed or moving, things that exist, that have existed, that can exist. And projecting within oneself things that will exist” is one of the objectives published in the FASE manifesto. On the programme, eight artists on display and two workshops on photojournalism: the first, on how to create a reportage, curated by Alessandro Gandolfi of the Parallelozero agency; the second, held by the photographer Lorenzo Papadia, with an approach based on experience in the field.
Castelnuovo photography. International photography and contemporary art festival
From 22nd to 30th June
Castelnuovo di Porto (Rome)
Utopian landscapes. Maps, projects, memories, unexpected desires, visions is the title of the eleventh edition of the festival. There are more than twenty-five exhibitions scheduled, including Birth of a utopia by the duo Andrea and Magda, which tells the story of Rawabi, a Palestinian city built in the occupied West Bank but with an architecture typical of Israeli colonies. Children, let’s rebel by Tano D’Amico is a collection of images that appeared in the author’s latest publications, published by Mimesis, and focuses on the “desire for freedom and justice, even in the most difficult places”. In addition to the exhibitions, portfolio readings and meetings are scheduled, and a bookshop dedicated to photographic publishing, fanzines and self-production will be set up.
Reportage Festival
From 27 to 30 June
Ascoli Piceno
The Fare, Reportage Factory association presents the fourth edition of its international photography festival, proposing reportage as “a still indispensable tool for measuring the social and political phenomena of our time with depth and breadth of vision”, write the organizers . The program includes exhibitions and workshops on both photography and videomaking, and an afternoon dedicated to portfolio readings.
Cortona on the move
From July 11th to November 3rd
Cortona (Arezzo)
“Place of freedom and space to be liberated”. The body is the subject at the center of this year’s edition, the fourteenth, of the Cortona international photography festival. Among others, the work of photographer Myriam Boulos will be on display, Sexual fantasies, with which the author intends to question “the conventional, colonial and patriarchal ways in which women and their bodies are represented through photography”. Carmen Winant will exhibit The last safe abortion which, as the name suggests, offers a visual story on the importance of abortion assistance and the value of care. Alessandro Cinque will bring to the exhibition Atrapanieblas (Fog nets), with which he won the nineteenth edition of the Amilcare G. Ponchielli award. In the first week of the festival there will be workshops, portfolio readings and meetings with professionals from the world of photography.
Lodi elegy.
(Gabriele Cecconi, Reportage Festival)
Photography Calabria festival
From July 26th to August 25th
San Lucido (Cosenza)
Family photography is the title of the third edition of the festival told, this year, through the gaze of ten photographers. The event is an opportunity to reflect on the role of artificial intelligence with the project He looks like you by Filippo Venturi. His work features the author’s father and son as protagonists as they play and share moments together. However, these are false memories, moments that never existed in unattainable places: “My father died five years before my son Ulysses was born and therefore they never had the opportunity to meet”, writes Venturi. His work is “an attempt to find consolation and to overcome the frontiers of existence through art and technology, generating images that blend illusion, dream and memory”. Also on display is the Finnish author Lydia Toivanen who with the work From one innocent look won the emerging photographers award. The project tells what it was like for her to grow up in a large family context, with twelve sisters and brothers, within a small religious community.
Phest. International photography and art festival
From August 30th to November 3rd
Monopoli (Bari)
In its ninth edition, Phest brings the dream, “to be celebrated as a disinterested game of thought”, to the center of the visual research of the works that will be exhibited in the streets of Monopoli. Among the artists announced so far: Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad, Paolo Ventura, Richard Sharum and Valentina Vannicola. Photographer Matthias Jung will hold an exhibition of the project Esperanto with whom he participated in the PhMuseum 2024 photography grant.
PhMuseum days. International photography festival
From 12th to 15th September
Bologna
The renunciation of detachment and impartiality is an integral part of the theme, “Closer”, of the fourth edition of the PhMuseum days festival. “Observation itself touches and changes things”, write the organizers, “every story is contamination and the works exhibited do not try to achieve an impossible neutrality but accept the partiality that comes from looking closely”. The program is still being developed and the names of the artists on display will be announced in the coming weeks.
Landscapes
14, 21 and 22 September
Wedge
The FormicaLab association brings to its third edition the festival “dedicated to the narration and documentation of the contemporary landscape through the use of different visual disciplines and expressive approaches”. The theme chosen for 2024 is “So close” to tell “the small landscape, the intimate one, placed one step away from our eyes”. Eight are planned lectio magistralis outdoors and the ten artists on display will be selected at European level with the open call method. The projects will be displayed inside telephone booths which, recovered and set up to become exhibition spaces, will design a route through the area that can be traveled on foot or by bicycle.
