Rome’s International Photography Festival reaches its 10th edition this year with a project that confirms the event’s growing national and international prestige and its ever more concrete attention to original productions and strong initiatives. Its overall purpose is to promote contemporary photography in its different forms and languages, and to support talents now emerging at the national and international levels.
This is the second year in a row that MACRO Testaccio is hosting the Photography Festival, so it can be considered a regular event and a key moment in the Museum’s yearly program, confirming MACRO’S and the city’s ever stronger attention to and support for photography.
For September 23rd and 24th, the Festival has organized meetings, lectures, workshops, presentations and screenings to encourage contacts between people who love or are curious about photography, and the whole international, Italian and Roman community of practitioners present in the city on those days.
The theme of the Festival’s 10th edition is MOTHERLAND, a word that should stimulate an analysis of the relationship between land and identity, between territory and values, between roots and the complexity of contemporary life, with a special focus on Italy, which this year is celebrating its first century and a half of unity.
In this way, the Festival will address the special relationship between photography and territory (in the deepest sense of the word), based on an analysis of the strong ties between the artists and the places to which they feel they belong, and in many cases identification itself. Each one replies in his or her own way. They investigate lands they belong to – old or brand new, large or small, real or virtual – with absolutely personal documentation, fruit of their own lives and of their need to return or depart. “Motherland” is a frequent theme in photography, and today we’re treating it in relation to the creation of ever new identities in a world that’s been thoroughly explored and technologized, but where the need to investigate new “lands,” to seek one’s own land, is back in strength.
MACRO Testaccio’s spaces will host many different shows that tell of the relationship between photographers and their motherlands, or the lands they have chosen to belong to:
•The prestigious rendez-vous with the ROME COMMISSION reaches its ninth edition this year. Every year a major international photographer is commissioned to portray Rome in total freedom. This year’s commission went to the great American photographer Alec Soth. His show, curated by Marco Delagu, is called “ LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI”; it was inspired by Keats’s poem of that name. Soth is universally recognized as one of the leading figures in the on-the-road photography school of Walker Evans, Robert Frank and Stephen Shore.
•“ MOTHERLAND,” a group show curated by Marco Delogu, features works never displayed before in Italy by eleven important international photographers: Alec Soth, Tim Davis, Guy Tillim, David Spero, Leonie Purchas, David Farrell, Tod Papageorge, Paolo Ventura, Antonio Biasiucci, Anders Petersen and Guido Guidi.
• THREE GROUP SHOWS of works on the MOTHERLAND theme:
“ WHEREVER I LAY MY CAMERA DOWN IS HOME,” curated by Paul Wombell, presents the works of five photographers who have done works on the need to find sanctuary;
“ DATASCAPES,” curated by Valentina Tanni, compares the works of two artists, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond and Rick Silva, who for years have tried to interpret and make sense of the contemporary “information scene”;
“ THE PLACE WHERE I BELONG,” curated by Marc Prüst, displays works by four photographers who are searching for their identity in their respective motherlands.
•The fourth edition of the IILA FotoGrafia AWARD for young Latin-American photographers will be hosted at MACRO Testaccio. The work of the 2010 winner, Pablo Lopez Luz, will be presented and those of the 2011 winner and finalists will be screened. This year’s winner, Alejandro Nicolás Sanín, will be awarded a month of residence at IILA in which to complete a work on Rome; it will be on show at the 2012 Festival.
•“ MIZU NO OTO,” The Sound of Water, works by Rinko Kawauchi, Lieko Shiga, Asako Narahashi, Yumiku Utsu and Mayumi Hosokura, curated by 3/3 in conversation with Rinko Kawauchi. Together with the MIZU NO OTO show, MACRO is hosting part of the second edition of Little Big Press, in collaboration with Fotoleggendo: a selection of the most interesting Japanese photography books brought out in 2010 and 2011, by Artbeat publishers, Foil, Little more and many other publishers.
•" NEW DUTCH STORYTELLERS,” curated by Rob Hornstra. The show, co-produced with the Dutch Embassy, features works by Willem Popelier, Anne Geene, Anna Dasovic and Rob Hornstra.
•Eight one-person shows by Italian artists, some emerging, others already established:
Stefano Graziani (curated by Francesco Zanot)
Alessandro Imbriaco (curated by Renata Ferri)
Lorenzo Maccotta (curated by Giovanna Calvenzi)
Francesco Millefiori (curated by Stefano Ruffa)
Valentina Vannicola (curated by Benedetta Cestelli Guidi)
Rodolfo Fiorenza (curated by Francesca Bonetti)
Francesco Fossa (curated by Valentina Bonomo)
Giorgio de Finis (curated by Silvia Litardi)
Lastly, two important new events:
-screening of 15 projects selected from among the ones submitted in response to the CALL FOR ENTRIES 2011 issued by the Festival’s artistic management to increase the visibility of emerging young photographers from all over the world;
-the WINE VIEWS competition, organized in collaboration with Gambero Rosso and Art Tribune: seeking new images to develop an ever closer relationship between the art world and the world of wine.
OTHER EXHIBITION FACILITIES participating in the Festival with different projects:
•Two group shows at the Japanese Cultural Institute: “ THE JAPANESE GARDEN,” Sept. 1 - Oct. 1, and “ METAMORPHOSIS: POSTWAR JAPAN.”
•“ 100” CLICK FOR CHANGE,” a group show at Palazzo Valentini, curated by Benedetta Donato and Aleardo Nardinocchi for pianoBI (Sept. 16-30).
•“ GAIJIN” at Spazio Cerere, photos by David Favrod, curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva (Sept. 21-24).
•“ LOWER DECK” at the City Museum of Zoology, photos by Christian Saupper, curated by Carla Marangoni (Sept. 22 – Oct. 23)
•“ BAS PRINCEN” at the Casa dell’Architectura, curated by Giampiero Sanguigni and Giuliano Sergio (Sept. 23 - Oct. 8)
•“ AEROIMPRESSIONISM” at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, photos by Sergey Yastrzhembskiy, curated by Olga Sviblova (Oct. 5 - 24).
•“ A SURREAL LIFE” at the Carlo Bilotti Museum, Villa Borghese Orangery, a retrospective of Milton Gendel’s photos, artworks and documents, curated by Peter Benson Miller, Barbara Drudi and Alberta Campitelli (Oct. 5 to Jan. 8).
•“ SUSPENSE: PHOTOS BY TIM PARCHIKOV” at the Museum of Rome in Trastevere (Oct. 8 - Nov. 13)
• “ TERRITORY OF LIGHT” at the École Française de Rome, photos by Bernard Plossu and others, curated by the École Française and Livre Lecture (Oct. 10 – 28).
•“ COUNTERSPACE” at the Istituto Centrale per il catalogo e la documentazione, photos by Antonio di Cecco, curated by Leonardo Palmieri.
Again this year, the most prestigious INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIES operating in Rome will participate in the program, presenting projects made specifically for the Festival:
•The French Academy at Villa Medici will open the Festival again this year, at 6 p.m. on Sept. 22, with a preview of a show of PHOTOGRAPHS by ERIC POITEVIN, curated by Eric de Chassey.
•The American Academy in Rome with a show of PORTRAITS by Milton Gendel, curated by Peter Benson Miller (Oct. 19 - Nov. 30).
•The Spanish Royal Academy with a group show titled “ PANDORA,” curated by Masasam, a group of young Spanish curators (Oct. 23-30).
The Festival also involves a large number of GALLERIES AND EXHIBITION SPACES selected for the 2011 CIRCUIT:
- 10B Photography: Yury Kozyrev, “ ON REVOLUTION ROAD”
- Buchineri: Emanuela Bongiovanni, “ HOTEL LEDYR”
- Camera 21: Karmen Corak, “ AWARE”
- CO2 Contemporary Art: Marco Morici and Ignazio Mortellaro, “ OBSIDIAN”
- Doozo: Jeannette Montgomery Barron, “ MY MOTHER’S CLOTHES”
- Editalia: Nicola Brandt, “ WLOTZKASBAKEN”
- Ex Elettrofonica: Ottavio Celestino, “ MECHANICAL NATURES”
- Franz Paludetto: Daniela Perego, “ MOTHERLAND”
- Galleria del Cortile / Sante Monachesi Archive: group show titled “ MADRETERRA”
- Galleria Gallerati: group show titled “ FLICKRLAND: THE MOTHERLAND OF MEMORIES”
- Galleria Maria Grazia del Prete: Marek Piasecki, “ DOES THE INVISIBLE OBSERVER LEAVE TRACES?”
- Galleria Valentina Bonomo at Studio Corrias Lucente: Chiara Caselli, “ TERRA MADRE”
- Marte / Ilex Photo: Paolo Patrizi, “ STARLINGS”
- Palazzo Maffei Marescotti: Thomas Munns, “ HEIMAT”
- Metropoliz: Guendalina Salini, “ WHERE THE DISTANT BEGINS”
- Spazio MuGa + Merzbau: Andrea Papi, “ TRANSITIONS: SELF-PORTRAITS OF THE UNSEEN”
- Spazio Nuovo: Olivier Roller, “ FIGURES OF POWER”
- s.t. – “Useful Portraits.” Olivier Thebaud, “ HOME IS NOT A PLACE”; Tano D’Amico, “ DISORDERS”
- Studio Orizzonte: Paolo Gioli, “ NATURAE”
- White Cube al Pigneto: Nicole Voltan, “ ENTROPY SYSTEM”
As in the past, the Festival will collaborate with the website Repubblica.it, which will organize a contest for its readers on the “Motherland” theme. The winners will be presented with a slide show at MACRO Testaccio on the last days of the Festival, October 22nd and 23rd.