Rome: FotoGrafia, International Photography Festival, 29th May – 2nd August 2009
From the 29th of May to the 2nd of August Rome will become the capital city of photography. In that period, indeed, the eternal city will host the 8th edition of “FotoGrafia”, an international photography festival that is always very appreciated by all those who have a passion for this form of art.
The programme of FotoGrafia is very rich and diversified,
and it includes exhibitions of photos took by great Italian and international photographers, but also meeting with artists, workshops, presentation of photo books and prize-giving. The desire of artistic director Marco Delogu, indeed, is that of turning FotoGrafia into a space for meeting, an unmissable chance to speak about photography. The headquarters of the event will be at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, where the most important events and the official exhibitions will be hosted, but many other galleries and spaces will be involved.
This year the event, which is achieving an ever-increasing international success, will be characterised by a more evident opening to the new means of expression of photography, with photos, projections and video installations realised by a selection of artists who have been asked to deal with the theme “Joy: Visions and Representations”.
Besides the theme of joy, the festival will focus on many other themes, and visitors who will travel to Rome will have the chance to visit many exhibitions. “Mutations II”, for example, will gather the works realised by about 20 European artists who have been exploring the border between photo experimentation and video, while the exhibition “From Soul to Body” will give photography lovers who have booked 5 stat hotels in Rome the possibility to enjoy the photos that Davide Monteleone took during his journey in the Russian Caucasus. The festival will be focused on the city that hosts it, and three events will be dedicated to Italy’s capital city. The first one, “Roma oculta”, will gather the photos taken by Ecuadorian Geovanny Verdezoto, winner of the 2008 IILA award, a prize which is awarded every year by FotoGrafia and the Italy-Latin America Institute. Spending a month in the eternal city the artist had the possibility to look into the multiethnicity of the city, and he focused above all on the religious faiths and fanaticisms of its inhabitants. The second exhibition dedicated to Rome will include the photos taken by South African Guy Tillim, who has depicted the everyday life of the city, providing a dirty, cold and sad image of the city, which is very different from the idea of Rome as a glorious city that people usually have. Rome will be also the protagonist of an innovative project, “In between_60 hours in Rome”: about 30 photographers tried to depict the city and took photos of it in 60 hours, from the 29th to the 31st of May. The peculiarity of the project is to be found in the location that has been chosen: photographers did not work in the historic centre or in the extreme periphery, but in an “in between” area, where the glorious image of the city melds with the results of building speculation.
But if you spend some days in a guest house in Rome you will also have the possibility to visit other exhibitions. The photos of “Through the windows”, a work realised by Giorgio Barrera, who won the Baume&Mercier award last year, let observers glance scenes of everyday life through a window, while “The Photographer” includes photos depicting about 20 photographers.
Tickets 10 euro, reduced 7,50 euro
Date: 29th May – 2nd August 2009
Location: Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy
