Festival of Ethical Photography in Lodi, Lombardy

From 24 September to 23 October, Lodi returns to tell the world through the Festival of Ethical Photography. A world in continuous and rapid change of which photography freezes the moment and helps to understand. Almost 100 photographers from all over the planet with over 20 exhibitions will open windows on often unknown situations and stories to involve the public through projects unpublished, exhibited in open spaces ' and in prestigious locations in the city.

Photography freezes the moment and helps to understand

A festival that wants to amplify the visibility of special, exciting and necessary stories. The heart of the exhibition remains the World Report Award - Documenting Humanity. All five sections that compose it, with the relative winners, can be visited at Palazzo Barni. Like the German Valentin Goppel won the Student category with the work Between the Years, the story of German youth during the period of the pandemic.

Special, emotional and necessary stories

Among other initiatives, the Spazio No Profit in the cloister of the former Gorini hospital exhibits three photographers, including Sebastian Gil Miranda which, for the organization Na Ponta dos Pés, presents Ballet against Bullets , a project that aims to encourage the empowerment of girls, offering opportunities for growth, learning and transformation social through dance and other artistic, cultural and sporting educational activities.

The lives of others

The lives of others, the thematic space of Palazzo Modignani, will propose six interesting photographic focuses. Like that of the French Thomas Morel-Fort who in Donna, a Filipina Life of Sacrifice captures the lives of undocumented Filipino workers employed at homes of wealthy people in Paris and the French Riviera, or that of the Canadian Barbara Davidson who in Valeries and Henry: Unhoused but Unbroken tells the story of two of Los Angeles' 65,000 homeless people.

The curious and very topical project by the Chinese Xiangyu Long deserves a special mention as a seven-second video uploaded to on TikTok transformed a yak herder from Tibet into an online celebrity overnight, making a profound impact on his native village.

Si Fest in Savignano sul Rubicone, in Emilia-Romagna

From 9 to 11 September and on the weekends of 17-18 September and 1-2 October back Si Fest, the photography festival of Savignano sul Rubicone (Forlì-Cesena), this year under the artistic direction of Alex Majoli.

In a world increasingly flooded with photographs, Si Fest tries to bring order to chaos by focusing everything on the education of the image of the new generations.

Image education

In recent months, this edition of the festival - entitled Lonely donkeys, with a quote from Il chaos by Pier Paolo Pasolini - has moved in the classroom organizing specific initiatives for the students of Savignano sul Rubicone. Now the same school environments are at the center of the exhibition itinerary, with a series of exhibitions set up between the elementary and middle schools of the area, thinking first of all of the students and their teachers.

Carried back between desks and blackboards, visitors to the festival are also invited to reason with the students' mental schemes. Science, mathematics, history… each exhibition is associated with a different subject , in an experimental exhibition itinerary. Even the festival catalog is conceived as a school album/diary.

Like at school: for each exhibition a subject ...

If the science exhibition is dedicated to Morire di classe, the historic photo book with which Carla Cerati and Gianni Berengo Gardin gave impetus to Franco's campaign Basaglia for the closure of asylums, for biology, geography and religion, the field of investigation extends to video language with Nsenene by Michele Sibiloni, reportage on the hunt for grasshoppers in Uganda.

... but not only

In addition to Alex Majoli's exhibition itinerary, the festival also offers selected exhibitions through competition and archive exhibitions. Like Luca Meola who tells the story of Cracolândia, a huge shopping mall in the heart of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Ilaria Sagaria who in Full of grace celebrates the female body, torn between torment and ecstasy.

Marcello Vigoni in Pietrasanta, Tuscany

The personal Marcello Vigoni . Multiverse, from 10 to 30 September 2022 at the Laura Tartarelli Contemporary Art gallery in Pietrasanta (Lucca), presents a selection of 17 black and white photographs in square format that put on paper the clash between man and nature through the juxtaposition of natural landscapes and urban panoramas.

Juxtaposition, slow times and double vision

In Vigoni's shots the natural element appears about to disappear, overwhelmed by the artificial element that forces and rationalizes it.

To obtain this double vision, in which one landscape fades into the other, Vigoni works with analogue photography and with the technique of double exhibition, electing it as its distinctive expressive figure.

The black and white printing in the darkroom and the slow time of the reflection that this entails are interpreted as fundamental expressions of the work.

Analog allows for rethinking

Every technical and formal choice derives from a careful study. "That color represents reality while black and white serves to interpret it is the obvious starting point but it is good to dwell on other aspects", explains Marcello Vigoni. Like the square format, for example, which induces the viewer to a more meditative approach that best suits a landscape, or the use of analog, instrumental to the possibility of a rethinking that digital does not allow.

The photographic medium to give life to a other reality

Through deep knowledge and wise use of the opportunities offered by the photographic tool, the author associates a classical practice with a language markedly contemporary using the photographic medium to give life to one's own reality rather than a mere reproduction. And it is to this aspect that the title of the exhibition refers, Multiverse , a term used in theoretical physics to indicate the possibility of coexisting universes.