FOTOGRAFIA International Festival of Rome X Edition
Curated by Marco Delogu and Alessandro Dandini de Sylva
MACRO Testaccio Museum Rome
The theme of the tenth edition of FOTOGRAFIA International Festival of Rome aims to tackle the unique relationship established between photography and the land, in the deepest and most intimate sense of the word, based on a genuine analysis of the close relationship between the photographers and their belonging to a place, and in many cases their actual identification. It is the result of an increasingly pressing need to seek one's "motherland": everyone responds in their own way, examining lands that belong to them, whether they are old or new, large or small, real or virtual, with a completely personal documentation, which is the fruit of their life and the need to return or move away.
FOTOGRAFIA Festival at MACRO Testaccio Museum includes the following exhibitions and events:
Motherland, group show curated by Marco Delogu, which includes works by Alec Soth, Tim Davis, Guy Tillim, David Spero, Leonie Purchas, David Farrell, Tod Papageorge, Anders Petersen, Guido Guidi, Paolo Ventura and Antonio Biasiucci.
La belle dame sans merci, the ninth edition of the Rome Commission assigned to Alec Soth and curated by Marco Delogu.
The three exhibitions: Wherever I lay down my camera is home curated by Paul Wombell with works by Andrι Cepeda, Julian Germain with Patricia Azevedo and Murilo Godoy, Eva Leitolf, Wiebke Loeper and Nigel Shafran; Datascapes curated by Valentina Tanni with works by Mathieu Bernard-Reymond and Rick Silva; The place where I belong curated by Marc Prust with works by Chris Harrison, Katharine MacDaid, Bruno Boudjelal and Rania Matar.
Mizu no oto — Sound of water, a group show curated by 3/3 with works by Rinko Kawauchi, Lieko Shiga, Asako Narahashi, Yumiko Utsu, Mayumi Hosokura; together with Little big press — Focus on Japan, a selection of the most interesting Japanese photographic books during 2010 2011, by publishers as Artbeat publishers, Foil, Little more, Bookshop M and many others.
New Dutch storytellers, a collective of young Dutch photographers curated by Rob Hornstra, with works by Anne Geen, Anna Dasovic, Willem Popelier and Rob Hornstra.
Solo shows by italian photographers such as 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.
Two days of lectures and conversations with photographers, critics and curators as Alec Soth, Rinko Kawauchi, Asako Narahashi, Tod Papageorge, Sebastian Hau, Leonie Hampton, and Ferdinand Brueggeman.
For the first time the Festival also hosts three international booksellers, Le Bal and Plac'art from Paris and Dirk Bakker from Amsterdam, with their rare books, the finest pearls of photographic publishing.
¬ www.fotografiafestival.it
David Favrod: Gaijin
Curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva
Spazio Cerere Rome
In collaboration with Fondazione Pastificio Cerere and with the support of Swiss Institute in Rome
"For a Swiss I am a Japanese and for a Japanese I am a Swiss or rather a gaijin".
David Takashi Favrod was born in Kobe, Japan, the son of a Japanese mother and a Swiss father, but grew up in Vionnaz, a town in Switzerland's Valais Canton, where his family moved shortly after his birth. Though he grew up far away from Japan, he was deeply exposed to his roots through his mother's culture and traditions, his maternal grandparents' war stories and his own trips to his native land. When he was 18 years old, the Japanese Embassy denied him dual citizenship which is allowed only to Japanese women who wish to acquire their foreign husband's nationality besides their own. As a result, he felt the need to explore his refused identity and the inspiration for the Gaijin project. Favrod writes: It is from this feeling of rejection and also from a desire to prove that I am as Japanese as I am Swiss that this work was created.
Gaijin is a fictional narrative, a tool for his quest of identity, an effort to come to terms with a refusal and assert his Japanese heritage. Inspired by family stories, the popular and traditional culture of Japan and the ancestral world of spirits or yokai, he develops archetypal images with irony and intelligence in a deep visual reflection on the complex relationship between self and others, image and memory, his own Japanese identity and his story. All the photographs in this series were created in Switzerland; in each carefully composed picture, full of references to Japanese commonplaces and connotations, the viewer discovers an hybrid of both countries. A tiny Mt. Fuji made out of a bedspread, romantic Swiss landscapes that look like Japanese prints, a brave samurai in cardboard armour, Kaiju shadows, mysterious monsters inspired by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, light and insubstantial origami birds, No theatre masks, fixed and timeless portraits, and archive material; from one image to the next, the artist slowly leads us into an atmosphere that blurs the line between reality and imagination, and drop by drop builds his own personal and elaborate view of Japan.
¬ www.fotografiafestival.it/spazi-istituzionali_detail.asp?id=25
PhC Capalbiofotografia 2011
Curated by Marco Delogu and Alessandro Dandini de Sylva
Il Frantoio Capalbio
"What have you been photographing here today, Eggleston?"
"Well I've been photographing democratically", I replied.
"But what have you been taking pictures of?"
"I have been outdoors, nowhere, in nothing."
Text from William Eggleston's afterword in The Democratic Forest.
PhC Capalbiofotografia 2011 is dedicated to walking, interpreted as an act associated to photographic vision, searching for a point of view; an act of thinking and concentrating. I walk, I see, I photograph: these three actions lead to an idea of photography that extends to the greatest freedom, touching upon imponderable fields such as emotions and abstractions. Photography is a privileged medium for defining personal geographies: its task is increasingly that of documenting personal maps, balancing large and small areas, historical and intimate boundaries.
The main exhibition of the Festival is the group show Personal Geography, which includes works by David Farrell, Pieter Hugo, Pablo Lopez Luz, Guy Tillim, Antonio Biasiucci, Piergiorgio Branzi, Marco Delogu, Paolo Woods and the duo Gioberto Noro.
¬ www.capalbiofotografia.com/?page_id=183
PhC Capalbiofotografia Blog
Curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva
During the month preceding the opening of PhC Capalbiofotografia 2011 photographers, curators and critics have been invited to think about the theme of the festival, leaving them free interpretation of its possible forms. Every week for a month, from March 2011 until April 2011, the blog has shown new points of view and new shifts in contemporary photography for a natural introduction to the reading of the Festival.
Fabio Severo, The necklace of memories
Francesco Zanot, Checklist
David Farrell, Six unmade photographs
¬ www.capalbiofotografia.com/?category_name=personal-geography
Lectures
Curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva in collaboration with [nove] Photography
Project Room Villa Glori Rome
Leonie Purchas
Guy Tillim
Marco Delogu
Riccardo Venturi
Tiziana Faraoni & Nazario dal Poz
Alessandro Imbriaco, Marta Sarlo & Fabio Severo
Massimo Siragusa
Tommaso Bonaventura
¬ www.novephotography.com/projectroom/?cat=4