A widespread event

Organised by Diorama Progetti Fotografici, in collaboration with the Monza City Council Culture Department and Confcommercio Monza, Monza Photo Fest aims to give life to a widespread event in the city area that makes photography the protagonist, bringing it closer to the wider public. Involving various exhibition venues including institutional venues, art galleries and commercial businesses that together propose a circuit that takes photographic culture beyond the restricted circle of insiders and enthusiasts, and encourages its enjoyment by the general public.

Established photographers and new talents

Under the artistic direction of Roberto Mutti, the programme of the first edition of Monza Photo Fest features established photographers and talented new authors, comparing different genres and styles. The festival promotes a series of exhibitions, as well as the proposals of some of the art galleries involved.

Maurizio Galimberti: ‘An expressive vertigo’.

Villa Reale in Monza - Sala Convegni / 20 September - 6 October 2024 - In collaboration with Polaroid

At Monza Photo Fest, the solo exhibition narrates the work of Maurizio Galimberti, internationally renowned for his Polaroid mosaics. Each work represents a moment of research in the most diverse directions, and is animated by an enthusiasm that Galimberti conveys through his photographs. Alongside some decompositions used to interpret the landscapes of large cities, a recent, unpublished work taken in New York is presented. The use of black and white and the choice to shoot in absolute freedom in the urban context of the Big Apple reveals a lesser-known aspect of the photographer, that of curiosity for an everyday life whose subtly spectacular aspect he knows how to capture.

Heinz Schattner: ‘The Liberation of Utopia’.

Musei Civici Monza - Conference Room / 3 October - 3 November 2024

The Musei Civici of Monza host, as part of the Monza Photo Fest, the personal exhibition dedicated to Heinz Schattner. German by birth and resident in Italy, he trained artistically in Paris and London, developing a style that blends in a fascinating dialogue the needs of commissioned photography with the suggestions of research photography. Successfully tackling the world of fashion, he investigates it with the original gaze that he transfers to his personal investigations. Here emerges his predilection for dreamlike visions, unsettling images, atmospheres that recall surreal perspectives that turn his photos into unsettling occasions in front of which every observer feels pleasantly disoriented.

AA.VV. ‘Sport Shots. Shots of Value’.

Curated by Fondazione 3M / Sala Espositiva Binario 7 / 17 October - 11 November 2024

The link between sport and photography is realised not only in the spectacular images of performances and victories, but also bears witness to educational and social values, the enhancement of individuals in groups, and much more. This is the basic idea behind the project ‘Sport Shots. Shots of Value’ wanted by the 3M Foundation at Monza Photo Fest to develop and disseminate positive and topical messages around sport. Elio Luxardo's investigation on the body is followed by a comparison between black and white images from the early days and some more recent ones in colour. Finally, fifteen contemporary authors investigate the values that sport represents with photos characterised by a remarkable evocative power that go beyond descriptive aspects by resorting to metaphor, symbolism and allegory.

Francesca Meloni ‘The Horizon of the Self’

Manzoni16 Spazio Eventi / 5 September - 3 November 2024

Francesca Meloni tackles at Monza Photo Fest such a complex and fascinating theme as the self-portrait with the awareness of the double role she has to take on by identifying herself as the narrating subject and the object of a research that is realised by investigating in depth. In his images it is exposed and denied, hidden and revealed, pursued and reached in a dialectical game where the body never appears in its entirety as it slips between the softness of a sofa, melts in the embrace of a chair, sinks into a mirror, mysteriously emerges from behind a door, and plays in the solids and voids of a frame.

Being Monza. Portraits of the Circolo Fotografico Monzese

(Fiaf Obiettivo Italia National Project - Photographic Census) - Curated by the Circolo Fotografico Monzese - Exhibition Hall Binario 7 / 2 - 13 October 2024

The exhibition, a collective work curated by Loredana De Pace | Studio CAOS, displays 94 photographs taken by the members of the Circolo Monzese in response to the Fiaf ‘call’. The national project, organised in collaboration with the National Institute of Statistics on the occasion of FIAF's 75th year of activity, asked Italian clubs to create a visual mapping of the inhabitants of their city, highlighting the social fabric in all its peculiarities: women, men, small citizens, couples, families, without forgetting the excellences that, in various ways, animate the city. Everyone spontaneously posed in front of the lens of the Circolo Fotografico Monzese members, resulting in a heterogeneous, joyful and elegant human texture. The title of the exhibition, ‘Being Monza’, emphasises this strong identity of the Brianza city.