Twenty. This is the number of editions of the Reggio Emilia European Photography Festival which, promoted and organized as always by the Magnani Foundation and the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, this year reaches, as explicitly stated by the organizers, «a moment in life when possibilities seem unlimited». Curated by Walter Guadagnini (photography historian and director of Camera – Italian Center for Photography in Turin) and Luce Lebart (researcher and curator at the Archive of Modern Conflict based in London), this edition of the Festival indeed offers many exhibitions dedicated to the theme of coming-of-age youth, accompanied and intertwined with sections dedicated to research and the history of the photographic medium, as well as offering two solo exhibitions of absolute significance.

Anonimo, “Carrozza nel parco”, ca.1860, ambrotipo, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
We visited all six festival venues and the kaleidoscope of notes and critical observations is indeed positively very broad. From a logistical and organizational point of view, the Festival is very easy to follow, and the mix of high themes and local topics allows the discovery of cultural gems of considerable depth, with a declination of the “twenty years” theme that is always very clear and didactically illuminating. This is the case, for example, of the first twenty years of photography history, on display at the Panizzi Library with the theme Through the Light, curated by Monica Leoni and Elisabeth Sciarretta with Laura Gasparini. Visitors to this section have the opportunity to enrich their knowledge with very interesting technical and socio-historical information, thanks to an engaging chronology of experimentation that led to the birth of the eighth art as we know it. Also impressive is the demonstration of how death has interested photographic art since its origins: in the same building, there is the possibility to journey through the depiction of the deceased loved one with the collection, donated to the Library, by Michael G. Jacob, writer, collector and expert of daguerreotypes, a pioneer in collecting the first silver plates. This latter section has an emblematic title, Remember Me, and is also very interesting iconographically for the anticipatory aspects of many famous more contemporary photographs displaying the post-mortem body.

Daido Moriyama, “Kanagawa”, 1967. From “A Hunter”. © Daido Moriyama/Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
The sequence of venues mentioned below reflects the chronology of the visit. Heart and fulcrum of the festival are the Cloisters of San Pietro which, this year, host ten exhibitions, nine thematic projects linked to the general theme and an unmissable retrospective on the great Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama. «The jukebox is sadder than a coffin» Jack Kerouac once said, and, thinking also of a photographic diptych that juxtaposes waste with a game room, one immediately understands what has been the leitmotif of much of the creativity of the over-eighty-year-old Japanese street photographer, capable of documenting the negative colonial and consumerist American contamination in post-war Japan. Complete beyond all limits, this magnificent retrospective, curated by Thiago Nogueira of the Paulista Instituto Moreira Salles, nevertheless broadens the gaze on Moriyama’s bulimic production of shots, which also covered eros, theater, crime news, social customs, rural life, the world of celebrities, urban pollution, capitalist consumption, up to the solitary depiction of a stray dog, self-celebrated as an admirable synthesis of his own life. There is also a remarkable section dedicated to artist books, magazines, and installations that completes the fruition of this giant of contemporary photography.

Andy Sewell, “Slowly and Then All at Once”, London, 2019 © Andy Sewell, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
British photographer Andy Sewell introduces the series of thematic projects related to the youth world, in full accordance with the meaning of this 2025 edition. His project, entitled Slowly and Then All at Once investigates forms of power by contrasting the austere and institutional atmosphere of the meetings of world leaders discussing measures to combat the climate crisis, while outside the buildings, led by Greta Thunberg, youth protests rage, often subject to repression. The faces, bodies, and also enigmatic interiority of adolescents is the project of Catania-born Claudio Majorana: Mal de Mer (“Seasickness”) is not, in reality, linked to the sea but to restlessness, shattered dreams, the fear that arouses the chronological passage from adolescence to a more mature age. The project by Iranian Ghazal Golshiri and French Marie Sumalla brings us back to the tragic youth reality of Iran which, starting from the tomb of Mahsa Amini, the young martyr symbol of the revolts against regime oppression, shows us how the death of the young Kurdish-Iranian woman is still sowing fruitful consensus among the women (and finally also among the men) of her country. Not by chance, the project has the strongly evocative title of You Don’t Die.

Vinca Petersen, “Riot Boy”, 1998 © Vinca Petersen, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
British Vinca Petersen instead explores the world of raves, well expressing the sense of total freedom (counterpoint to the previous project) that such context emanates on the youth world. A sense of freedom that joins a sense of lively rebellion and in fact the project is entitled Raves and Riots Constellation. Truly unprecedented for the undersigned is the existence, in a southern state of the U.S.A., of a huge military school with a black majority (the reportage shows us almost exclusively young black girls and boys): We are Carver gives the patriotic sense of belonging as well as the sense of honor, mixed with fear, of those who attend this institute which, indeed, is called Carver High School, the subject of Jessica Ingram‘s photographic project. Thaddé Comar brings us back to the great youth street protests and, specifically, those that affected Hong Kong at the time of unification with China. How Was Your Dream? is the emblematic title of the thematic project: it is a universal question but which, in this case and seeing the young people protecting themselves under umbrellas, takes on even greater strength.

Toma Gerzha, “Anya e Ilya”, Kolchugino 2021 © Toma Gerzha, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
Toma Gerzha is a Russian photographer living in the Netherlands. Her reportage, Control Refresh, shows young people from former socialist countries dealing with the contemporary, with traditions especially in less urbanized areas, with the modernity of social media, surrounded by futuristic skyscrapers or gray barracks-like socialist architecture. A similar sense of loss and suspension between different mental worlds is transmitted by the project FuckTokyo – Dual Main Character, also with a largely explanatory title. It is a nocturnal journey into the underground vibrancy of the Japanese capital and shows us how Western fashions have infected Japanese youth (as feared by the photographic testimony of Daidō Moriyama). Finally, we arrive in Italy with a Dominican-French photographer, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, who, inspired by the famous Pasolinian Love Meetings, documents the affective and social relationships of our Generation Z, titling her thematic series, again very appropriately, Fragments.

Karla Hiraldo Voleau, “Abbraccio”, Rome 2021 © Karla Hiraldo Voleau, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
Entering the nearby Palazzo da Mosto, another core venue of the Festival, one is welcomed by the technological screen of Federica Sasso, which shows us young caregivers operating in the Reggio area). This is an expanding phenomenon and often without the necessary awareness of the importance of the role, as it is seen by the protagonists as almost a due form of commitment. Intangible is the name given to the project and it has a technological and interactive side with the users, as well as being the production of this edition of European Photography. Michele Borzoni and Rocco Rorandelli, with the project Silent Spring, were selected from among hundreds of applications to the open call. We return to the conflict between climate activists and governmental authorities, while with the other winning project of the format, Octopus’s Diary, Polish Matylda Niżegorodcew surprises us by identifying herself in the lives of others with surprising effects.

Matylda Niżegorodcew, “Octopus’s Diary. Łódź, Poland”, 2023 © Matylda Niżegorodcew, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
The educational project of European Photography, Special Eighteentotwentyfive, proposes the artistic duo Camilla Marrese and Gabriele Chiapparini who involve eight young actors questioning, with images and texts, what form an age can have. Women See Many Things is the engaging photographic reportage that collects dozens of gazes of women from the Swahili Coast (shores of Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique), captured by Kenyan Halima Gongo, Tanzanian Gertrude Malizeni, and Mozambican Nelsa Guambe, coordinated by curator Myriam Meloni. The drama of impending war and its effects on youth groups are at the center of the photographic project by Roman Rä di Martino who investigates the meeting places of young Lebanese with Electric Whispers.

Ra di Martino, “Electric Whispers 3”, Beirut 2024 © l’artista, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
The relationship between shadow and image (and not only) is one of the possible interpretations of the anthology hosted by Maramotti Collection and focused on the photography of Viviane Sassen. Sacks reminiscent of cocoons (or Gaza shrouds), mutilations imprinted on collages, dust, leaves, bodies without faces, faces without bodies, subconscious becoming image, surrealist nuances, and dreamlike elements: these are the ingredients of the superb photography of the Dutch artist, collected in the project This Body Made of Stardust. Observing Sassen’s photographs means crossing the transversality of techniques and languages; it also means perceiving an omnipresent nuance of death, due to biographical elements that have deeply affected the sensitivity of this great artist of the eighth art.

Michal Solarski & Tomasz Liboska, from “Cut It Short”, published by Kehrer, 2021, © Michal Solarski & Tomasz Liboska, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
The visit to the XX edition of the European Photography Festival concludes with two more dense immersions into photography, its theoretical elaboration, and its declination. Inside the Civic Museums, Ilaria Campioli curates a multiform section dedicated to Luigi Ghirri, moving along three directions. First of all, the exhibition of excerpts from his Photography Lessons, held in the ’90s decade at the University of the Project in Reggio Emilia and then editorially reunited by Paolo Barbaro and Giulio Bizzarri. There are also some shots by the photographer from Reggio and, finally, a revisitation of Ghirri’s poetics formulated very effectively by artists Luca Capuano and Stefano Graziani. Ghirri’s non-technical language is a reference for generations of photographers following him and this is also demonstrated by the presence of works by students from the Higher Institute for Artistic Industries of Urbino.

Marie Sumalla & Ghazal Golshiri, “A young woman without a hijab stands on a vehicle as thousands of people make their way to the Aychi cemetery, to commemorate the 40th day of Mahsa Amini’s death, in Saqqez, her hometown in Iranian Kurdistan. Muslim tradition celebrates this date as the day of the soul’s passage to the afterlife, and the end of mourning, Saggez, Iranian Kurdistan”, October 26, 2022, © Anonymous Author, ph. courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
With such premises, the 12th edition of the award named after the photographer from Reggio, namely the Young Italian Photography, dedicated to the valorization of photographers under 35, cannot be missing, here represented by seven projects gathered under the collective aegis Unire/Bridging. Observing these thematic series, one perceives how photography continues to explore new territories, using also mixed technical media and expressing family situations, even harsh interiority, real situations, pure imagination, issues related to identity, surreal and brutalist creativity. It is worth mentioning here that the seven exhibited photographer artists are Daniele Cimaglia and Giuseppe Odore, Rosa Lacavalla, Sara Lepore, Grace Martella, Erdiola Kanda Mustafaj, Serena Radicioli and Davide Sartori.

Fotografia Europea 2025, “Avere Vent’anni | Being Twenty”, installation view, ph. outThere collective, courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani
The last stop of the Festival is vertical and dutifully historical, albeit always in line with the guiding thread of twenty years. The three-story structure of Spazio Gerra proposes a contamination between documents with a strong didactic intent and precious archive photos of the Reggio Resistance (curated by historian Massimo Storchi and sociologist Marco Cerri), an exhibition promoted by Spazio Gerra (which is municipal) and Istoreco (Institute for the History of Resistance and Contemporary Society in the province of Reggio Emilia) and an investigation of how the contemporary Generation Z can be declined (curated by Stefania Carretti, Lorenzo Immovilli, and Erika Profumieri). Fox Laila Slim and the others are indeed battle names of three partisans from Reggio who, in the aftermath of September 8, 1943, and also assuming different identity names, decided to go up to the mountains and align themselves with the Resistance. Resisting at twenty (but the two titles should be read together) is a journey into some forms of resistance, both individual and collective, both personal and social, conducted by Alessandro Bartoli, Marco Belletti, Lorenzo Falletti, Alessia Leporati, and Andrea Sciascia. The exhibition is accompanied by the homonymous catalog published by Silvana Editoriale.
Info:
FOTOGRAFIA EUROPEA//XX. AVERE VENT’ANNI
24/04/2025 – 08/06/2025
Various locations
Reggio Emilia
www.fotografiaeuropea.it

I am Giovanni Crotti, born in 1968, and I feel obliged to thank writing because it drives my life. I cultivate within me multitudes that lead me to investigate, know, and deepen every cultural and creative expression, and then write about it, always trying to be clear and documented in the contents.
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