It will be held in Reggio Emilia from May 21 to July 4 Fotografia Europea 2021, a festival organized under the artistic direction of Walter Guadagnini with the support of Tim Clark, editor-in-chief of the online photography magazine 1000 Words, and Diane Dufour, collaborator of Fotografia Europea from 2015 to 2017.
This year’s edition, particularly awaited due to the cancellation of the 2020 one because of the pandemic, is dedicated to imagination, dreamers and their way of expressing deep meanings through images. In fact, Fotografia Europea 2021 takes its origin from a famous verse by Gianni Rodari “On the Moon and on the Earth, make way for dreamers”, to underline the importance of fantasy in art, in this case figurative art.
The Festival 2021 will question itself on the role played by images in this precise historical moment and on their characteristics: temporariness, ambiguity and complexity. It is precisely the interpretation of these traits that makes them an excellent starting point for reconsidering the world in which we live.
An entire city on exhibition
Several places will host the exhibitions of great masters and young beginners: the cloisters of San Pietro and San Domenico, the Panizzi Library, Palazzo Magnani and, for the first time, eight city squares that will be made available for the realization of the Festival.
Among the many exhibitions planned for this year, we would like to mention the one by Piergiorgio Casotti and Emanuele Brutti, who will present the project “INDEX G”: a sort of theater of silence based on the characteristic stories of the characters, where the unspoken words remain suspended in time.
In Reggio Emilia there will also be Yasmina Benabderrahmane, whose project “La Bete” will illustrate a long journey through the plains of Morocco, her native country. Through visual art, the goal is to give herself and the viewers new aspects of a place she now feels she has lost.
Visitors will also be able to appreciate the exhibition “TRUE FICTIONS – Visionary photography from the 70s to today“, curated by Walter Guadagnini and focused on the concept of staged photography. This expression identifies different aesthetic strategies reproduced within the artistic production in the period between the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium. A trend that has revolutionized the photographic language, placing photography in the world of contemporary arts and showing its most imaginative and visionary side.
Unprecedented open-air installations
For the first time in the history of the Festival, eight projects by contemporary photographers will be exhibited in open-air settings in many areas of the city. This is the case, for example, of “Opera aperta” by Alex Majoli, produced by the “I Teatri” foundation, and “Eden” by Soham Gupta, dedicated to an imaginary city that gradually gives way to nature.
Less than a month, then, to the Fotografia Europea festival, which opens its doors to all those projects that intend not only to give answers, but also to raise questions and stimulate reflection. An opportunity to help us rethink the dynamics that manage the creative processes, in a historical moment that throws us towards new and different ways of living. However, one aspect remains fundamental, which has always accompanied the world of images: their ability to create beauty, to give comfort to those who look at them, generating a sense of belonging that unites us.
Mariachiara Proietti Di Fulvio
