In Lucca from 21 May to 12 June 2022 the new edition of the International Biennial of Photography

The theme of Photolux 2022, chosen by the artistic direction committee composed of Rica Cerbarano, Francesco Colombelli, Chiara Ruberti and Enrico Stefanelli, is love. A rich program of over 20 exhibitions, hosted in some of the most prestigious places in the center of the Tuscan city, and a series of collateral initiatives such as conferences, workshops, portfolio readings, meetings with the protagonists of international photography.

Approaches to love

"The selection of authors presented in the 2022 edition of Photolux", explain the components of the artistic direction of the festival, "brings to light the multiplicity of possible approaches, some new and contemporary, others more classic and traditional, to the theme of love, which translate into the telling of unique and different stories and encounters, where each of us can rediscover a little of himself ".

Giving voice to feelings and desires

"By building the exhibition proposal of You can call it Love", they continue, "we thought of photography no longer as a mirror or as a window, but as an X-ray machine, capable of seeing through us and giving voice to some sensations, desires , emotions that we don't even know we have ".

International protagonists

The program presents some of the most important names on the international photographic scene, from Seiichi Furuya to Erik Kessels, from Marta Bogdańska to Pixy Liao to Simone Cerio. Among the most anticipated events, Brass Mon Amour, an exhibition that offers 120 photographs that tell the cinematographic journey of Tinto Brass, as well as unpublished documents, such as scripts, sketches of sets and costumes, polaroid of auditions, posters, letters, all coming from personal archive of the Venetian director.

Two Italian premieres

And then two Italian premieres: the monographic by Seiichi Furuya (Japan) with the Face to Face project, the final chapter of the Mémoires, a path carried out by the author for over thirty years with the aim of preserving, elaborating, celebrating the memory of his partner Christine and the seven years of love they lived together, and the installation by Erik Kessels (Netherlands) for the sixteenth chapter of his In Almost Every Pictures, dedicated to the erotic creativity staged in the living room of the house by the two spouses Noud and Ruby.

Literature, culture, art

Among other projects, PIMO Dictionary the domestic vocabulary created by the Chinese artist Pixy Liao (China) together with his partner Moro, Love that dare not speak its name by Marta Bogdańska (Poland), on the figure of Selma Lagerlöf, the first chapter of an ambitious work on queer biographies of important characters in literature, culture and art, in a large group exhibition on family portrait and Religo, the work of Simone Cerio (Italy) which tells of the LGBTQ+ community within the Catholic one, the works by Ferdinando Scianna with his famous Religious Festivals in Sicily.

Kaleidoscope of feelings

"Ancient Greek", continue the artistic directors of the Festival, "used various terms to define the possible declinations of love; most modern languages are not that precise. The lexicon at our disposal seems, out of modesty or inadequacy, to fail to outline in its entirety the kaleidoscope of feelings that life offers us every day, thus compressing the many shades of what, for convenience, we are used to calling love. Photography gives us a stratified and polyform representation of love, and it is precisely in the multiplicity of photographic language that the infinite possibilities of the "love discourse" of which Roland Barthes spoke: a fragmentary discourse, because it is complex, but necessary and, in its elusiveness, omnipresent in the life of each of us ".

Info: 0039058353003 / photoluxfestival.it